My Life in the Fish Tank

by Barbara Dee

  “What happened?” Scarlett asks.

  “No idea,” Gabriel answers. “I was just in the kitchen having breakfast, and all of a sudden, thwump.”

  “Trees don’t just fall over all by themselves, Gabriel!”

  “Yeah, Scarlett, obviously. Are you saying I went, ‘Ooh, here’s a fun idea, while everyone else is asleep, why don’t I go over and knock it down’?”

  “Well, no,” she admits. “But since you were the only one up—”

  Suddenly something whooshes by my feet. A small brown furry thing. I scream.

  “Omigod, what was that?” Scarlett yells. She flings herself onto the sofa.

  Now Aiden is in the living room. “How come there’s a squirrel in our house?” he asks, as if he thinks there could be a logical answer.

  “That was a squirrel?” I squeal. “Are you sure, Aiden? How do you know?”

  “Because it had a bushy tail. And a squirrely head—”

  “Don’t say ‘squirrely head.’ ” I shudder. I am all in favor of squirrels, and rodents in general, but only in their natural habitats.

  “I bet it came in through the chimney,” Gabriel says. A smile is creeping across his face. “Hoping we’d mistake it for a reindeer. It probably has glued-on antlers and a fake red nose. But squirrel-size.”

  “Stop!” Scarlett yells. “This is not funny!” But she’s smiling too.

  “Well, we have to catch it, don’t we?” I say. “I mean, we can’t just let it run loose all over the house!”

  “Come on, Zinny,” Gabriel says. “It’s just spreading Christmas cheer.” He does his goofy Gabriel smile at me.

  Which of course means I have to smile back at him.

  Then Mom and Dad are standing beside us in clashing plaid bathrobes.

  “What the hell—” Dad begins.

  “It’s the Squirrel of Christmas Present,” Gabriel says. “Our theory is he accidentally knocked over the tree.”

  “Use ‘they’ if you’re not sure of gender,” Scarlett reminds him.

  Mom groans. “Guys, I told you I was against hanging gingerbread stars. I bet the squirrel was attracted to the scent.”

  “You mean they smelled cookies from outside?” Scarlett asks. “And then snuck in to steal one from the tree? Mom, I bet squirrels don’t even like gingerbread—”

  “Forget about the gingerbread,” Dad says. “Let’s just send it back into the great outdoors. Pronto. Where’s a broom?”

  “Don’t say ‘it,’ and don’t sweep him!” Aiden shouts. “Squirrels aren’t garbage!” The way his chin is quivering, I can tell he’s trying not to cry.

  “Can’t we just call a wildlife person?” Mom begs.

  “It’s Christmas morning,” Dad reminds her. “If anyone’s working, they’ll just charge extra. Gabriel, what are you doing?”

  Gabriel has slipped out of the living room, and now he returns in a fuzzy, baggy Santa suit, carrying a red felt sack. This is Dad’s costume he used to put on for us when we were little. Now it smells dusty, like the garage, where Dad tossed it a few years ago. Maybe he’d decided he was too old for holiday dress-up, or too tired, or something.

  “Ho-ho-ho,” Gabriel booms. He tosses some smashed gingerbread stars into the sack, which he sets by the sliding doors. “Come and get it, Rudolph.”

  Sometimes Gabriel doesn’t explain things very well. Or at all. And once again I have the feeling I need to pin him down, just to be sure I’m following.

  “You’re going to lure the squirrel into the sack?” I ask. “And then free him—I mean them—outdoors, right?”

  “Yep,” he says. “It’s the festive thing to do.”

  “Well, it won’t come if we all stand around watching,” Mom says. “I think it needs privacy.”

  “Just like Santa does,” Aiden says. He’s six, at the age when either he knows about Santa or he doesn’t. And because he’s the baby of the family, none of us want to spoil it for him.

  “Want some help?” Dad asks Gabriel. He doesn’t seem too enthusiastic.

  “Nah,” Gabriel tells him. “This is a job for Santa.”

  The rest of us clear out of the living room. About fifteen minutes later we hear scuffling, then another crash, then Gabriel shouting, “Hey, rodent, over here,” then more scuffling. Then the sound of doors sliding open and shut.

  “Ho-ho-ho, everybody!” Gabriel shouts. “Rudolph’s gone down in history!”

  We rush back into the living room. Gabriel’s face is flushed, and he’s beaming.

  “You let him back outside?” Aiden asks. “Rudolph’s okay?”

  “Are you kidding, buddy?” Gabriel is laughing, mussing Aiden’s hair. “Rudolph’s better than okay. Right now he’s bragging to all his squirrel friends how he knocked down a tree, then ate a sackful of gingerbread. It’s the best day of his whole squirrel life!”

  Late December

  A few days before Christmas, Gabriel left the hospital and came home. Except it wasn’t really Gabriel. It was some paper-cutout version of him, thinner and flatter than my real brother.

  As soon as he stepped into the front hallway with Mom and Dad, I hugged him through his down jacket—a small sideways hug, careful to avoid the sling strapped across his body.

  “Hey, you,” he said quietly.

  “Hey, you back,” I said, smiling. “We’re so glad you’re home again! Finally!”

  “And you didn’t even miss Christmas!” Aiden shouted.

  Gabriel flinched, like he wasn’t used to loud voices. “You’re right, buddy, I didn’t. Although I don’t have presents for anyone.”

  “Then you’re not getting any from us,” Scarlett teased.

  Everybody laughed except Gabriel. I knew we were just nervous, but I couldn’t help thinking this welcome-home had gone wrong somehow.

  “Well, if it’s okay, I think I’ll go lie down now,” Gabriel said. “That car trip wore me out.”

  “Oh sure,” Dad said quickly. “I could use a nap myself!”

  Mom didn’t take her eyes off Gabriel. “Sweetheart, don’t you want a little snack first? I baked a whole tray of gingerbread—”

  “No, thank you,” Gabriel said. His voice sounded hollowed out. Too polite.

  Scarlett and I traded a look.

  After that Gabriel stayed inside his room, sleeping. He didn’t eat very much either. Not even Mom’s gingerbread.

  * * *

  Two days after Christmas, Mom and Dad drove him to a place called Redwoods Village. It wasn’t actually a hospital, Dad explained, it was a “residential treatment center,” but I wondered if those were just words you said, like “a little off.”

  Right before they left, I asked Mom why Gabriel couldn’t just live with us.

  Mom was in her bedroom, packing a small overnight bag and sniffling into a tissue. She added a pretend cough, like she was trying to convince me she had a cold, but of course I knew she’d been crying. “Your brother needs a lot of support right now, sweetheart. The doctors have to get him stable on his meds, and that’s a whole complicated process. And he needs intensive therapy.”

  “Can’t he get therapy here?”

  “Not as much as he can get at Redwoods Village.”

  She tried to smile, but it didn’t work. As her eyes filled with tears that she dabbed away with the crumpled tissue, I couldn’t watch. “Also, honey, at this point Gabriel needs round-the-clock supervision. For his own safety.”

  “Okay,” I said, and escaped the bedroom.

  The name Redwoods Village sounded cheery, even Christmasy. But after that conversation I was pretty sure what it was. A sort-of-mental-hospital where your brother got sent, and they wouldn’t let him leave.

  After Winter Break

  At lunch Kailani and Maisie were discussing Guess Who again, whether some comment he made in homeroom meant he was dropping out of orchestra. What James Ramos did with his viola was about as interesting to me as belly-button lint. And I was positive that if I heard one more word o
n that topic, my brain would turn into soup and leak out both of my ears.

  So while they talked, I wrote a mental list to share with Aiden:

  How to Survive If You Take a Bite of Pizza and Realize the Cheese Is Molten Lava

  How to Survive If You Sit on a Rock but It’s Actually a Snapping Turtle

  How to Survive If Overnight All the Floors in Your House Turn to Jell-O

  How to Survive If It’s Raining Saliva

  How to Survive If You’re Lost in the Arctic and All You Have for Ice Fishing Is a Wire Coat Hanger

  How to Survive If Your Friends Won’t Shut Up About James Ramos

  “Okay,” I blurted. “I need to go see Ms. Molina!”

  Maisie’s blue eyes got big. “Again? Zinny, you go there almost every lunch.”

  “I just want to ask her something.”

  “Can’t it wait?” Kailani asked. “Lunch isn’t over for twelve more minutes. And then we won’t see you until dismissal.”

  Maisie and Kailani were both Team West. I was Team East. We were together for homeroom and lunch, but that was it.

  “I know, but.” I shrugged. “I really like hanging out with Ms. Molina.”

  Kailani and Maisie traded a look. Saying you liked hanging out with a teacher—in fact, that you preferred it to hanging out with your best friends—was just plain weird, and we all knew it.

  “Zinny, can I please just say something?” Maisie said. “I mean, we haven’t brought it up, because we don’t want to pressure you. But lately you’ve been acting kind of… strange.”

  “What do you mean?” I sipped some water.

  “You never want to do anything with us after school anymore. You barely talk to us when we’re together. And basically you act like you’re on another planet.”

  I felt my stomach flip. Because they were sort of making me sound like Gabriel. And who knew, maybe Gabriel’s college friends had said almost the exact same words to him before his accident.

  Am I like Gabriel?

  Why wouldn’t I be? And Scarlett and Aiden, too, for that matter.

  “We know you’re worried about your brother,” Maisie added quickly. “I mean, how can you not be? But my mom says he’s doing better from that car accident, right?”

  Her mom? What did she know about anything? I couldn’t imagine Mom telling Maisie’s mom; they weren’t close. Unless Mom had talked about Gabriel to one of her friends, and then that friend had blabbed to someone else…

  But I thought we were supposed to keep Gabriel’s illness “private.” All of us, including Mom.

  “Yeah, he’s recovering,” I said, silently adding the word “physically.” I swallowed a blob of tuna sandwich that was stuck in my throat and drank some more water. Then I wiped my mouth with a napkin. “But you know what? Right this minute I’m really just wondering why they put onions in the tuna. And also too much mayo; it’s kind of disgusting.”

  “Zinny,” Kailani said quietly.

  “You want to hear something funny? When I was little, I named my best Barbie ‘Mayonnaise.’ I thought it was the fanciest name ever, kind of French, or something.”

  Kailani and Maisie looked at each other.

  “I had another Barbie named Salsa,” I continued. “And Ken was Ketchup. I called him Ketch for short. That’s definitely a boy name, don’t you think? ‘Hey, Ketch, sup?’ ”

  “Zinny,” Kailani said. She wasn’t smiling. “Why do you keep changing the subject?”

  “What subject? You mean there’s only one subject to ever talk about?”

  “Hey, we can talk about whatever you want,” Maisie said sharply. “Including serious things, okay? Real things. That’s exactly what we’re trying to tell you!”

  “Great! Then let’s talk about how to identify poisonous mushrooms! Or how to escape a boa constrictor! Those are definitely real things!”

  They were both staring at me.

  “Or How to Survive Quicksand,” I added.

  Kailani rolled her eyes. “Okay, Zinny, that’s not a real thing,” she said.

  Later the Same Day

  When I got home that afternoon, Mom was in her bedroom with the door shut, arguing with someone on the phone about Gabriel’s medical bills. Scarlett was in our bedroom, typing, and Aiden was at the dining room table, surrounded by his color-coded notebooks, a juice box, and a half-eaten bag of Goldfish crackers. As soon as he saw me, he pushed the crackers away, like he thought I’d scold him for spoiling his supper.

  Except what supper would that be, anyway? I quickly scanned the kitchen. Mom hadn’t left anything on the stove; there were no cooking smells coming from the oven. Actually, I couldn’t remember the last time she’d cooked a real, whole meal for the family instead of just scrambling eggs or making a pot of spaghetti or microwaving some Stouffer’s. I didn’t blame her for not cooking; I knew she was working all the time on Gabriel’s stuff. But it kind of felt like she’d forgotten about the rest of us. And maybe also about herself.

  As for Dad, he never cooked anyway. And actually, he’d been missing most suppers lately. Which had hardly ever happened before Gabriel’s accident.

  “Where’s Mom?” Aiden asked, looking over my shoulder.

  “On the phone,” I said. “Wanna help me make supper?”

  “You?” His forehead puckered. “But you can’t cook, Zinny.”

  “Who says? It’s not brain surgery, Aiden.”

  I opened the refrigerator and started collecting food specimens: a flabby carrot, some sprouting potatoes, a mushy onion, a lemon, a chunk of cheddar cheese, ketchup, hickory-smoke-flavor barbecue sauce, and an opened carton of organic low-sodium chicken stock. In the pantry closet I found a can of tuna, a can of chickpeas, and some pasta shaped like tennis rackets.

  Most of it from Before the Accident, probably.

  I chopped up the carrot, the potatoes, the onion, and the cheese. Then I dumped everything in a big red enamel pot Mom only ever used for making chili. Gabriel’s favorite. Maybe she won’t want to make it again, I thought. Until Gabriel comes home, whenever that is.

  Well, so this will taste the opposite of chili.

  I looked inside the cupboard where Mom kept the spices and dried herbs. But all the jars looked really old. And to be honest, I didn’t know what any of the flavors were, or what I was supposed to do with them.

  I shut the cupboard door.

  “What are we cooking?” Aiden asked.

  “Tuna surprise,” I heard myself say.

  Aiden looked worried. “Is that a real thing? I always thought tuna surprise was made up.”

  “All recipes are made up.”

  “No, I mean, made up like a joke.”

  “Nah, tuna surprise is definitely a thing. I’m sure I’ve eaten it once or twice.”

  “But don’t we need a recipe, Zinny? Maybe we could look it up online—”

  “What for? We’ll just use whatever we have. It’ll be our own special family recipe. Besides, Aiden, where’s your spirit of adventure?”

  I wiggled my fingers in a mad-scientist sort of way.

  At last Aiden smiled.

  Third grade boys aren’t exactly mysterious, I thought. Good thing I totally get his sense of humor.

  I turned on the burner to medium, handed Aiden a big metal spoon, and told him to “stir until boiling.”

  “What happens then?” he asked.

  “It cooks. So how’s that big project going?”

  “What big project?”

  “You know. That thing you were telling me about before winter break. How to Survive When You Accidentally Shampoo Your Hair with Elmer’s Glue.”

  “That wasn’t the topic, Zinny.” He stopped stirring. “And it’s not due for a long, long time, We’re just Conducting Research and Developing Our Ideas right now. Anyhow, I switched.”

  “You’re not doing the quicksand thing? So what are you doing, then?”

  “It doesn’t matter.”

  “Of course it matters! And don’t think
you’re not going to tell me, because I demand information.”

  He began stirring again. “How to Survive an Invasion of Cyborg Mosquitoes.”

  “Huh,” I said, adding some salt to the pot. “Interesting. How are cyborg mosquitoes different from real ones?”

  “They’re programmed to attack people who itch the most.”

  “But if they’re programmed, they can be hacked, right?” I argued. “So actually, they’re not as invincible as the regular kind.”

  “Yeah, but the cyborg ones don’t care about bug spray.” He thought. “Also, bats don’t eat the cyborg kind, so they have no natural predators.”

  “Well, that sucks. So how do you survive them, then?”

  “You use light sabers to zap them. They’re allergic to the vibrations.” He held up his stirring spoon and made it shiver like a light saber.

  “Gotcha,” I said. “Cool topic, Aidy. Did you read about it somewhere?”

  “Nah. I made it up.”

  “Well, I bet your class will love it. Hey, is the pot boiling yet?”

  “No, but I see teeny bubbles.”

  “Keep stirring. Ms. Molina taught us about this when we did a chemistry unit—stirring speeds up the molecules to make them boil faster.”

  “Really?”

  “Yep. You know, cooking is basically just chemistry—”

  “What’s that smell?” Now Scarlett was standing in the kitchen, her face scrunched up. “You guys are making supper?”

  “Well, somebody has to,” I said. “Mom’s on the phone doing medical stuff for Gabriel. In her bedroom, with the door shut.”

  “So how do you know what she’s doing?”

  “Because I heard her though the door.”

  Scarlett frowned. “She didn’t say anything about food?”

  “Nope. She didn’t even come out to say hello.”

  “Whoa,” Scarlett said. “Mom really needs to start taking care of things again. And herself. I’m getting worried about her.”