by Simeon Mills
“Your dad thanked me for taking such good care of you. And Kanga. We must have talked about that particular dickens all through my prep period. But we also talked about you, Darryl. We decided a championship is the perfect medicine for what ails you. Big game tomorrow. I don’t need to tell you. You’re already spiffed up.” Mr. Belt clicked his tongue at my dress shirt. “You’re a young man. Youth is on your side. The world is your oyster. Conquer it if you like.”
• • •
The final basketball practice of the season didn’t start until four thirty, so I waited alone in the cafeteria, slouched against the wall with two fingers covertly plugged into an outlet. Where was Kanga? I had no idea. I didn’t want to talk to him anyway. Practice was a blur as I sat against the Cave wall, still plugged in, though the school’s tepid electricity just left me feeling more exhausted.
Toward the end of practice, the players began screaming and running in terror from Kanga, who had James Botty on his shoulders. James was still fashioned as a member of the Fab Five, though he had failed to persuade any other teammates to copy his hair, shorts, and shoes. Kanga had regressed in style, wearing his old grocery-store high-tops again after throwing away his Cons. Up on Kanga’s shoulders, the bully steered my brother around the court with heel kicks to the ribs. The Ceiling Fan frowned at the spectacle, shaking his head. I tried, his expression said, but they just don’t get it.
“Cut it out, guys!” Rye finally said. “The game’s tomorrow night! Somebody’s going to get hurt!”
Kanga erupted with a primal scream in Rye’s face. Now he was playing the role of beefed-up jock, and he was nailing it.
After practice, I approached the bike rack, only to realize my bike was still at home. I would be walking. Could one-handed people even ride bikes? Could they make tacos? Could they tie their own shoes?
Kanga bounced atop his bike and glided in an easy circle around me. Kanga. Currently first place in The Game with eighty-seven tallies—or maybe he’d earned himself another tally mark since I’d left Gravy Robotics. I hoped he would speed ahead and let me walk home in peace.
“How’s your hand?” he asked.
“It’s nothing.”
He stopped his bike and took a long look at the outline of my hand, still stuffed in my pocket. He was debating whether a good brother was required to ask another question about it or if he could move on to a new subject. “So I’ve got a girlfriend now. You know her. Brooke. She used to be the team manager. It all just kind of happened. You and Brooke used to be close, right?”
“I know who she is.”
“Well, I got pretty sad after you left, and I told her about it. She said to stop worrying, that you’d be okay. And you are.”
“I guess she was right.”
“And her mom invited us over for dinner. So that’s where we’re going. To Brooke’s. Dinner starts in twenty minutes.”
I laughed. “That sounds great. Have a wonderful time, Kanga. I’m going home.”
“Come on over to Brooke’s for dinner.”
“I’m not going.”
“But I really want you to come, Darryl.”
“I don’t have a bike. My battery’s nearly empty. I just want to go home.”
“I have a bike.” Kanga curled an arm around me, scooping me off the ground before slamming my butt down on his handlebars.
“KANGA!”
“And I really want you to come.” He glued one hand to my hip; his other hand grasped the handlebars. “So let’s go have a nice family dinner.”
• • •
Kanga pedaled us through the darkness. I had no choice but to listen to him jabber:
“—called me down to the office yesterday afternoon for a phone call. I thought it was going to be you calling from the hospital. But it was Brooke’s mom. It was weird, just standing in the office, talking on the phone with this lady I’d never met. She asked me to dinner, and I said okay, but only if my brother could come too. I thought it was good luck to say you’d be coming. And here you are! How is your hand feeling?”
“Like nothing. It’s a fake hand.”
“But the other hand still works?”
“Good enough, I guess.”
“Good.” Kanga knew what an excellent brother he was being. I could hear smiling in his voice. “How’d you get to the hospital?”
“I didn’t go to the hospital. You saw what’s inside me.”
“Yes. And I don’t want you to feel ashamed about it. You can tell me everything. I won’t judge you. I’ll just listen.”
“I’m a robot.”
“Okay. You’re a robot.”
“And you’re a robot too—”
“Where did you go? To get your hand fixed?”
“Detroit. You know, the address in the back of The Directions. Gravy Robotics. It was just a laboratory in a basement. I didn’t see much of the lab, only a few rooms. Most of the time I stood there, waiting for them to operate on me. The hand I cut off—they threw it down a chute to an incinerator. Then they kept me in this bare little room all by myself.” Even if he was just pretending to care, I’d never spoken to Kanga like this. I could feel through his touch that my words were making him uncomfortable, but he didn’t stop me from saying them. And suddenly it was like we were brothers again, but upgraded models. We were brothers with the luxury feature of being able to say anything to each other. “And Betsy, this amazing woman who worked there. At first, I figured she was just a secretary, but she turned out to be really important to the whole company. She was the one who put my new hand on. It happened so quickly, Kanga. Just a few minutes, and bang! I’ve got a new hand. I watched her do it. How do I even explain Gravy? I wasn’t welcome there, not at first, but Betsy—”
“Did you find out about Mom and Dad?”
You’re closer to Dad than you’ve been in years, I could have said. But I didn’t. “I met the scientist who created you. Dr. Murphio. He knew all kinds of information about us. Well, about you. He’s pretty much in love with you. You’re the best robot he’s ever made. Maybe. And there’s a chance Dr. Murphio made that Chinese robot, Ma. I found some papers in his office—”
“But what about Mom and Dad? If this doctor guy knows everything, why didn’t you ask him about Mom and Dad?”
“I needed to get fixed. My hand was leaking. I could have asked a million questions, but my hand—”
“I’m sorry about your hand, Darryl.” He was done talking about it. We were getting close to Brooke’s house. Surrounding us were castle-size houses. Any of these front yards could have held our entire apartment building. Kanga slowed his pedaling. He was reading mailboxes and house numbers. He said, “So about eating tonight.”
“Did you bring food receptacles?”
“No receptacles. Tonight, we eat for real.”
“Kanga.”
“I need you to trust me.”
I reminded myself of all I’d learned. That The Directions was full of lies. That Kanga was winning The Game. Which meant I should probably hear him out. I asked, “You’ve eaten food before?”
“I eat burgers all the time. Not around you.”
“And it doesn’t muck up your works? Entire burgers? What happens?”
“What happens is they taste good. You’ll understand after tonight.” He veered us down the mouth of a driveway. “We’re here.”
20
BROOKE’S FRONT YARD was guarded by walls of tightly packed pine trees and shrubs, like a private park. Kanga pedaled up her winding driveway, and we were met by a portable hot tub with dark, bubbling water inside. It sat right there on the blacktop, blocking access to the middle door of Brooke’s three-car garage. I read the sticker on the side of the hot tub:
ON-THE-GO JACUZZI RENTAL
ANYTIME – ANYWHERE
A garden hose snaked away from the tub, disappearing under one of the garage doors. Anybody could have been watching us from the dark windows of Brooke’s huge white house. Kanga lifted me off the handlebars
and then leaned his bike against a tree. There were no sounds coming from the house. Only the bubbling water.
At the door, Kanga gave me final instructions: “When we sit down at dinner, you eat. Got it? They put food on your plate, you eat it. Take a drink of milk with every bite. Just eat, and afterward we go to the bathroom. I’ll show you what to do.”
Kanga rang the doorbell. I glanced back at the hot tub, the steam floating into the black treetops.
“Kanga Livery!”
Brooke’s father stood in the doorway.
“And Kanga’s brother!”
He was the shortest man I’d ever seen. Less than five feet. He was shorter than Brooke herself. He was almost as short as me.
“Welcome, Kanga!” But his voice was gigantic. “And—?”
“Darryl,” I squeaked.
“Darryl? Take your shoes off.”
Brooke’s father closed the door. He reached up and grabbed Kanga’s shoulder, pinching the muscles in a fatherly manner. “Nathaniel Noon. Brooke’s dad. But you can call me Nathan. Or Pastor Noon. That’s what most people call me. Well . . . Take your shoes off, gentlemen!”
I took my shoes off. We were waiting on Kanga. Having ridden straight from practice, Kanga was still in his grocery-store high-tops. When he unlaced them, the smell of his old, greasy sneakers hit everyone in the vicinity.
Pastor Noon did not mention the smell. He pinched his nostrils and clapped his hands. His socks were gleaming white. “The rest of the gang’s already sitting down. Dinner is ready. Right this way. Would you like to wash up, Kanga?”
The Noons’ house was embarrassingly huge. The shoe-removal area alone was the size of our living room. I’d seen mansions on TV, but nothing could have prepared me for the sheer expanse of these wood floors, smooth and soft, without the harsh polyurethane gloss of a basketball court. This wood had been pampered, oiled, and given a long vacation on a tropical beach, where it had assumed its bronze hue. Then there was the darkness. No lights on the ceiling, just lamps beside every couch and chair, lamps in every corner. The house was built for sitting on cushions and reading books. I saw no TV.
“Kanga and Darryl, meet my wife. Mrs. Larissa Noon. We call her Mom. Of course you know Brooke. Why don’t you boys take your seats?”
There were two open seats at the dining room table. One next to Brooke (Kanga jumped to claim it) and one next to Mrs. Noon. She was blond. Otherwise she was exactly like Brooke. Except more composed, more regal, more expensive, more still. The wineglass tipped at her mouth drew my eyes to the three open buttons of her blouse. Mrs. Noon set down her wineglass. She stood up from the table and offered me her hand to shake. Her right hand, which was aimed at my right hand, which was still in my pocket.
Shaking hands? I couldn’t. Nor could I merely ignore Mrs. Noon’s dainty fingers. Luckily, in the depths of my processor, I’d kept old footage of an even more formal greeting, one that required no interpersonal contact at all. I bowed to Mrs. Noon. “A pleasure, my lady,” I announced, my head paused down by her knee, my left hand twirling in the air.
“My goodness!” she exclaimed. “This gentleman will sit by me. Darryl, this seat is for you. Let those two do their thing.” She nodded toward Kanga and Brooke. She patted my seat. “We’ll sit here.”
I glanced at Brooke. She hadn’t noticed my bow, or even that I was in her house for the first time. She did not resemble the snapshot of her I kept in my processor. Instead, she looked like a beautiful snake wearing lipstick meant to attract another snake. Kanga. I wanted to grab the nearest fork and gouge it through my eyeball sensors. But I couldn’t. There was the small matter of eating a full dinner under the scrutiny of humans. So I depowered my emotional inputs. I switched on “survival mode.” My skin thickened to scales, and I became a snake myself.
“Did you see the hot tub?” Brooke whispered to Kanga.
“The hot tub,” said Pastor Noon, frowning. “We rented a hot tub last weekend. Don’t ask me why.”
“It’s for me,” said Mrs. Noon. “I have a sore back.”
“One more day, then it’s gone, returned whence it came. One more day and it’s back to normal for us.”
“I don’t suppose you brought a swimsuit, Darryl?” asked Mrs. Noon.
“Let us now pray,” said Pastor Noon.
The five of us bowed our heads. We closed our eyes and listened to Pastor Noon recite the prayer. I listened closely to Mrs. Noon’s lips forming the words. I peeked and saw her looking at me. She grinned.
“Amen.”
“Amen.”
“Amen,” said Pastor Noon. “Let’s eat!”
Dinner began. The table was piled with food. Pastor Noon dipped a large fork into a ceramic pot: huge portions of Swiss steak, which he then smothered with spoonfuls of sauce. “And extra sauce for you, Kanga.” A salad bowl was passed from Mrs. Noon to me to Kanga to Brooke, who wrinkled her nose and said she hated salad. Everyone received his or her own baked potato. The nightmare ended with two pieces of bread, with butter, on an extra plate.
Beside my plate were a knife, a fork, and a spoon. I had used these utensils only rarely, as tacos were a handheld food, and never with my left hand. And never without a food receptacle. Awkwardly, I picked up the fork. I started with the salad, as it required no cutting, just stabbing the pieces of lettuce and fitting them in my mouth. Additionally, the salad was poofy, mostly air volume; a well-chosen leaf or two could give the appearance of a serious dent in my allotted food. My dinner plate screeched from the clumsy use of my fork. “Sorry,” I whispered. To my delight, I had succeeded in piercing a leaf of lettuce. It looked evil. Opening wide and feeling the cold lettuce with my lips, I finally guided it through my teeth to a place where my tongue could free it from the fork. Then I chewed. I’d never eaten salad before. Tacos broke apart easily for swallowing, but the lettuce became a singular blob in my mouth. I reached for the vinegar, but there was none. No vinegar? I tried to stay calm. At least there was a liquid of some kind: a glass of milk sitting beside my plate. I drained half of it, but the lettuce blob remained swirling in the rapids at the back of my tongue. I needed a new strategy. I filled my cheeks with the remaining milk then swallowed it all at once, like a tsunami. My knee struck the bottom of the dinner table, and everybody’s plate hopped. The lettuce was still in my mouth, so I packed it in the corner of my cheek.
“Kanga loves my steak,” said Mrs. Noon. She took a small sip of wine. “Kanga, give your plate to Nathan.”
“That’s right, Kanga. I’ll fix you up. We’re not shy about seconds in this house. I’m curious. What do your mom and dad do for a living?”
Kanga was still chewing. He patted his belly. “Delicious!” I was shocked to see that, in addition to Swiss steak, my brother had devoured his baked potato and a piece of bread, though he hadn’t touched his salad. Consuming the occasional burger was one thing, but Kanga ate like a man who never missed a meal. My brother could mimic Magic Johnson, and now a gourmand. But could he talk to inquisitive humans about our parents? I had always fielded this aspect of conversations with adults. The trick was to be boring, which discouraged follow-up questions. Dad delivered newspapers. Mom was a stay-at-home mom. Best of all, these answers had an element of truth (as long as I omitted the part about them vanishing five years ago). I had no clue what Kanga would say, but I couldn’t speak for us even if I wanted to. The blob of lettuce had plugged my throat.
“Our mom and dad?” Kanga swallowed. “If you ask my brother, he’d say they’re robots.”
Pastor Noon straightened up, aghast, glaring at his wife with alarm.
Kanga just smirked, handing his dinner plate to Pastor Noon. “That was the game Darryl always made us play as kids. So we all pretended to be robots too, because of him. Sometimes we still do. We have good parents that way, always using their imaginations with us. Otherwise, it’s a bit boring how normal we are. Dad delivers newspapers. Mom stays at home.”
“Look at you brothers,” said Mrs. Noon.
“A fine pair,” said Pastor Noon, handing Kanga a reloaded plate of food.
“There was a time when Brooke wanted nothing in this world more than a little brother,” added Mrs. Noon. “But it wasn’t God’s will.”
“No,” her husband said, frowning again. “Instead we have another daughter. Baby Elecsandra. She’s sleeping upstairs.”
An awkward moment followed, where everybody played with the food on their plate. Kanga forked a strip of Swiss steak into his mouth. I stared at my empty milk glass and prayed for a torrential rain to begin falling from the ceiling. Mrs. Noon took a sip of wine. Brooke drummed the floor with her heels.
“I don’t mean to brag,” said Pastor Noon, faking a conceited smile, “but my wife here used to be a star of the Metropolitan Opera in New York City.”
“Nathan.”
“A real star!”
“I was not a star.”
“Tell the boys your story. It’s delightful.”
“It’s not even a story.”
“It’s a delightful story. I love it, personally.”
“I’ll need another glass of wine. Just a taste, if I’m going to tell this story.”
“I’ll get it.” Brooke rose from the table.
“Bring me the wine bottle, young lady,” said Pastor Noon, “and the bottle opener.”
“I can do it, Dad!”
“Darryl, are you familiar with the Metropolitan Opera?” asked Mrs. Noon. “We were performing Aida.”
Brooke returned to the table with a purple wine bottle and the opener, refusing to yield them to her father.
“Young lady—” said Pastor Noon.
Mrs. Noon paused with her mouth open, watching her daughter use a corkscrew on the bottle.
“I told you I can do it,” said Brooke. She passed the uncorked bottle to Pastor Noon.
The pastor took Mrs. Noon’s empty wineglass and poured. He stopped. He poured a tiny amount more.
“Thank you, dear.” She took a small sip, licking her lips. “Aida.”
“I love Aida!” Pastor Noon recorked the bottle. “She’s talking about the opera.”