“What kind of pass was that?” Skylar muttered under her breath. Makena hoped that Chloe didn’t hear her, but by the look on her face, it was clear that she had.
Practice ended a few minutes later, and instead of the normal fun chatter, the team was silent. Chloe drank from her water bottle quietly. Makena walked over to her.
“Hey, good luck with your performance this weekend. I hope it goes really well.”
“Thanks” was all Chloe said. Makena wanted to say more, but the right words didn’t come.
“We’ll try to call you from Canada, OK?” Makena asked. “Me and Val.”
Chloe nodded and walked away. “Good luck, Makena.”
Makena was quiet as she and Skylar waited to cross the street, heading toward her dad’s shop to get a snack. She was replaying some of the scenes from practice and thinking about Chloe. She hardly registered when a bus pulled up at the stop in front of them.
“I have the best idea,” Skylar said. Grabbing Makena by the arm, she dragged her to the open bus door.
“This the bus to New York City?” Skylar asked the driver, who raised a tired finger to the electronic sign above her head, which read: EXPRESS/MIDTOWN.
“Perfect,” Skylar said, fishing in her pocket. She pulled out a yellow MetroCard. “I’ll pay for both of us.”
“Skylar, what are you doing?” Makena asked in alarm as Skylar dragged her onto the bus.
“Oh, my dad got me the card. It’s cool.”
“No, I mean, where are we going? I thought we were just walking to town!”
“We said we were going to town; we didn’t say which town. Come on, it’ll be fun,” Skylar answered, bolting to the back of the bus. The doors shut behind Makena while she was still in the stairwell.
Makena followed Skylar and said in a low voice, “Skylar, my mom doesn’t let me go to New York City by myself. She’s going to freak.”
“She’s not even going to know,” Skylar said, stretching out on the seats. “I know where this bus stops. There’s a supercool arcade right there. We’ll go, check it out, and come back in a few hours, and no one will even know.”
Makena looked out the grimy bus window. The scenery was changing quickly as they traveled south from Westchester. Apartment buildings and industrial shops replaced leafy trees. It was too late for her to get off now. Anyway, she had no idea how to get home. She did know that the West Side was about half an hour away. She looked at her phone. It was two thirty. As long as she was home by four thirty, her mom wouldn’t worry. So if they hung out for an hour and got right back on the bus, they could be home long before Makena’s mom even noticed they were gone.
The arcade was right where Skylar said it would be. Makena started to relax a little. Using the ten-dollar bill she’d brought, she bought eight dollars’ worth of tokens, played Space Duel, Dragon’s Lair, and Moon Patrol, and had a long battle of air hockey with Skylar. The girls used the last two dollars for an ice cream sandwich and headed back to the bus stop.
Makena’s phone began to vibrate in her pocket. She looked at the screen.
MOM CELL.
A taxi blared its horn at a passing fire truck. Makena had to cover her ears to block the siren. She went to answer the call.
“No! Don’t,” Skylar said and hit the Ignore button on the phone. “She’ll hear all the sirens and horns and know where we are. Just text her.”
“If I text her, she’ll just keep calling. She’s not much of a texter.”
“Well, whatever you do, don’t answer now.”
Makena knew Skylar was right but felt terrible not picking up her mother’s call. The phone vibrated again.
“Leave it,” Skylar warned. “Wait until we get back to Brookville. Even the bus will be too obvious.”
The bus to Brookville pulled up as if on cue. Makena sighed and looked at her phone’s clock. It was nearly five o’clock. With any luck, they’d be home by five fifty. The phone buzzed again, and Makena could feel her mother’s worry vibrating through the little machine. Skylar reached over and turned it off.
“We’ll be back soon. No one’s going to know. We’re not going to get caught, Makena.”
The ride to Midtown had taken about twenty-five minutes, but the journey home was more like two hours. The bus crawled along, slowed down by an accident on the highway. Skylar said she would handle everything with Makena’s parents, but all Makena cared about was getting home and making sure her mother wasn’t a total mess.
They leapt off the bus at close to six thirty and sprinted the distance to the Walsh home. Will was outside on his skateboard, the early summer sun extending twilight. He gave Makena a grave look as she and Skylar ran down the street.
“She’s home!” Makena heard her brother yell. Seconds later, Makena’s mother burst through the front door.
“Mac!” Her mother ran down the steps. “Where have you been? I’ve been calling you for hours. Your father said you didn’t come in after practice. He’s driving all over town looking for you. I’ve been worried out of my mind and was about to call the police!”
Her mother grabbed Makena into a tight hug. When she pulled back, Makena saw tears in her eyes.
“Mom, we’re fine. Really,” Makena said weakly.
Skylar kicked right into apology. “Oh, Mrs. Walsh, this is all my fault. We went to town, but then we were horsing around behind the school, where we maybe shouldn’t have been, and by mistake, I knocked Makena’s phone out of her hand and down a gutter. Luckily, it didn’t fall into any water, but we couldn’t reach it. We could hear it ringing too, and Makena was dying to answer it, but it took so long for us to get it out. It’s all my fault. I should have been more careful.”
“So you guys were at the school this entire time?”
“Yeah, we tried everything to get the phone out. Makena told me how important it was to her. We didn’t want to come home without it,” Skylar lied easily.
“Why didn’t you just use her phone?” Will asked, pointing at Skylar.
“I forgot to charge it last night. Battery’s dead,” Skylar answered without missing a beat.
Makena’s mom looked at Skylar for a long minute and then turned to Makena. “This true?” she asked her daughter.
Makena hated lying to her mother, but she didn’t know where the truth was hiding anymore. She nodded and picked at her cuticle, unable to meet her mother’s gaze.
“Did you get my comic book at least?” Will asked, a knowing look on his face.
“Oh. No,” Makena said, finally happy to tell the truth. “I totally forgot.”
9
“Mom, Will’s not helping,” Makena complained, carrying another pile of clothes down the stairs.
“Oh, he’s too involved with that comic book you got him. That was nice of you,” her mom said. Makena glanced at her brother, who was curled up on the living room couch. Makena had gone with her father to get the Asterix comic book for Will after dropping Skylar off at the bus stop, and Will hadn’t put it down since.
“You and I can handle this.” Makena’s mom gave her a smile.
“Where should I put these?” Makena asked, looking around the cramped, makeshift bedroom.
“I don’t know. I’m still not sure how to make this work,” Makena’s mom said, frustration tingeing her voice.
Makena and her mother had been trying all morning to fix up the small den off the living room for Papa. The room was tiny. There was only enough space for a narrow twin bed, an old dresser, a nightstand, and a small oxygen tank. Most of the den’s original contents were now jammed into a corner of the basement.
“Why are we doing this again?” Makena asked.
“The doctors say going up and down the stairs is too hard on your grandfather’s lungs.”
“Why?”
“Well, he’s not getting enough oxygen, and it make
s him short of breath.”
Makena stared at the oxygen tank. This was new. It looked like a fire extinguisher, except instead of a big black blaster, there was a thin, clear tube with two little attachments Papa put in his nose. Her grandfather had started using it several times a day. He didn’t like it at all. Mostly because lack of oxygen had done nothing to cause him any lack of appetite. Papa was still obsessed with food and didn’t appreciate little plastic things up his nose getting between him and his antipasti.
“What’s it called again? In his lungs?” Makena asked.
“Emphysema.”
“That doesn’t sound good,” Makena said.
“No, it’s not good, but it could have been a lot worse. We didn’t know for a while, and that’s why he had to see all those doctors.” Makena’s mom picked up a picture and dusted it off.
“Here, this might make it look homier.”
Makena peered at the snapshot. The faded photo had been sitting on the dresser in her room for the past few months, but she’d never bothered to look at it. The image was of a young couple: a woman dressed in a winter coat standing next to a handsome young man wearing a hat. The woman held a baby. The Statue of Liberty rose in the background, green and grainy.
“Who is that?” Makena asked.
“That’s me,” her mom answered.
“Where?”
“I’m the baby. Wrapped up in a blanket. That’s your Nanna, and that’s Papa. I must have been just a few months old.”
“Wow,” Makena said, looking closely at the faces in the photo. It was hard to imagine the smiling young couple as her grandparents. She didn’t remember her grandmother, who had died when Makena was four. Sometimes Makena forgot that Papa wasn’t just her grandfather; he was also her mother’s father. Makena would hate to see her own father not getting enough oxygen.
Makena felt an unpleasant knot tying itself up in her chest. Like when Will sat on her after she hid the remote. It made her feel awful inside.
“Look on the bright side, Mac. You can have your room back now,” her mom said and managed a small smile. She left to go get the rest of Papa’s clothes.
Makena sat on the bed, holding the picture and feeling as small as the images in the frame. She felt so guilty for lying to her mother but couldn’t bring herself to tell her about all of Skylar’s lies. Makena wanted to confess, but her mom was so preoccupied with Papa that she didn’t want to make things worse.
She sat on the bed, looking at the picture. On cue, Papa shuffled in.
“Where’s the lunch? Where’s your mother?” he asked Makena in his thick Italian accent. Papa had come to the United States from Sicily when he was a teenager.
Makena smiled at the old man. No amount of emphysema was going to keep Papa from food.
“She’s upstairs,” Makena answered. “I can make you something to eat.”
“Tu?” Papa said with a laugh. He clapped his hands in front of himself and looked at Makena like she couldn’t even open a can of soup. “Ma, sei pazza.”
“I’m not crazy! I can cook, you know,” Makena said. “Dad taught me.”
Makena’s grandfather laughed, but the laugh quickly turned into a cough, a deep hacking cough that made him double over. The sound made Makena feel short of breath. Papa gestured to Makena to help; she jumped up, walked him to the bed, and hooked him up to the oxygen.
The coughing subsided after a few minutes. Makena sat quietly next to Papa. He put his hand over hers.
Makena’s mom came into the den with an armful of clothes. Seeing her father hooked up to his oxygen tank, she asked, “What happened?”
“I told Papa I would make him lunch, and he laughed so hard he needed help breathing.”
Makena’s mom smiled at her dad. “She’s not half bad,” her mom said. Papa gestured with both hands, fingers to thumbs, which needed no translation. He wasn’t buying it.
Makena had dropped the framed photo when she got up to help him. Now she picked it up and put it back on the nightstand, hoping Papa would like seeing it there.
Instead, he became very upset. Grabbing the picture, his eyes narrowed and he blurted in rapid-fire Italian, “Ma guarda! Ecco la causa di tutti i miei problemi. Hai visto? ’Na sigaretta in mano anche li.”
Makena had no idea what was going on. She knew some Italian, but that was too fast.
“What’d he say? What’d he say?” Makena asked, worried that she’d upset him.
“He said…he can see the cause of all his problems,” Makena’s mother replied.
Papa pointed to the image. “Guarda bene,” he said.
Makena knew that meant look carefully. She peered closely at the image.
“I know, that’s Mom in the blanket,” she said.
“No,” her grandfather replied. “Here.”
He was pointing at himself in the photo. Finally, Makena saw it. There was a small white cigarette in Papa’s hand; a swirl of smoke shadowed the young family. Makena had never seen her grandfather smoke anything in her life.
“I never knew you smoked, Papa.” Makena said. “That’s gross.”
Papa nodded. “Si.”
10
“Dad, what time are they coming again?” Makena asked.
“Six o’clock.”
“What time is it now?”
“It’s, uh, five fifty-nine, approximately five minutes since you last asked me the time at five fifty-four.” Makena’s dad looked up from his watch with a mixture of exhaustion and amusement. He was adding charcoal to the grill on the small patio next to the family’s house.
“What’s for dinner again?”
“Oh, it’s a surprise from Miguel. We’re going to try out some recipes he brought back from his sister in Texas, frijoles charros and some chiles rellenos.”
Makena had no idea what any of that was, but her mouth still watered at the thought. Everything her father made was delicious, and although she could never tell her dad, everything that Miguel, Val’s father, made was even better. It was ultra-delicious. Putting the two of them together was bound to be good. Makena watched her dad carefully arrange his ingredients on the small table next to the grill, like he was setting up a chessboard. Her stomach growled with hunger—and nervousness. She was anxious to see Val, who had been away visiting relatives for almost two weeks.
Makena turned back to her brother. After their thumb war had turned too violent, their father had decreed a noncontact waiting game in order. So now they were sitting at the worn wooden picnic table in the backyard playing finger football. The score was tied at 27 to 27, and Will was kicking an extra point. If he could flick the little paper triangle through the goalpost Makena made by holding her thumbs together, fingers up, he would win the Paper Football Super Bowl. The loser had to set and clear the table, so stakes were high.
“You’ve got one more minute, Will. Take your best shot.”
“No moving,” Will said, eyeing his sister from across the table. He got eye level with the stadium field/picnic table. It was do-or-die. He balanced the paper triangle “ball” with his finger and prepared to kick it by flicking it with his forefinger.
“Clock’s ticking. Tick. Tock,” Makena said, trying to psych him out.
“Hold on,” Will said, sitting up suddenly. “The ball’s falling apart. Time-out.”
“There are no time-outs,” Makena said.
“Yes, you get three time-outs.”
“OK, thirty seconds. Go.” Makena looked around the corner for any sign of Miguel and Val.
Will opened the triangle. The ball was simple enough to make, a piece of lined paper folded into a long strip and then folded up diagonally with the end of the strip tucked into the last fold. Definitely not high-tech.
Makena thought she heard a car door.
“That them?” she asked her dad, who had a view of the d
riveway.
“No, Mac, not yet.”
Makena looked back at her brother and saw that he had unfolded the entire ball.
“Your time is up. What are you doing?” she asked. Then she noticed some familiar writing on the paper.
Makena jumped up from her seat. “Give that to me!”
“No, it’s my shot!”
She mustered her sweetest tone. “Please, can I have it, Will?”
“Then you forfeit,” Will said, holding the paper behind him.
“Fine, I forfeit. You win,” Makena replied.
A car door slammed in the driveway.
“They’re here!” Will yelled, jumping up from the table and tossing the paper into the air. Makena scrambled to catch it before it hit the ground.
The blue paper had folds and creases all through it. Makena put it onto the table and tried to straighten it out as best she could. She could hear Val and Miguel greeting Will in the driveway. Makena wanted to run to meet her friend, but something kept her glued to the paper for an extra minute. At the top of the page were the words in bubble letters and a few lines underneath.
She realized she must have left it lying around. Makena had been thinking about her team and doodling little Soccer Sisters pictures. Her favorite was of a girl kicking a ball that turned into a heart.
“Mac!” the unmistakable voice of her best friend called.
“Howdy, pardner! How was Texas?” Makena asked with a drawl. She took the paper and stuffed it into the elastic waistband of her shorts. Val plopped down on the bench looking tanned and happy.
“Hot,” she announced.
“What did you do with your cousins?” Makena asked.
“Well, we hung out. Played a lot of soccer. Rode some horses. Went swimming. Like I said, it was super hot. Oh, and we found this.” Val casually tossed a small plastic bag onto the table.
“What is it?” Makena asked, picking up the bag.
“A scorpion.”
Makena dropped the bag with a yelp. “Val!”
“It’s dead, don’t worry. I found it under my bed,” Val said. “I brought it back to show your mom. Figured she’d know everything about it.”
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