“Zefi and I were witnesses in a burglary, but you know that by now. What’s crazy though, Dad, is that the burglary is far from the worst part of my day.” I crouch on the floor and slip “Skater” out from under the bed. “I got my face punched in too, and it looks pretty bad. Mom got to the station in her white pantsuit, you know the fancy one, and—”
My cell starts ringing, and when I pull it away from my ear, I see “Dad” flashing.
“You mentioned Zefi and the line cut,” Dad says.
“It’s nothing,” I say. “None of what happened today would’ve happened if you were still here. That’s all.”
The thick blackness has burned away and been replaced by a gauzy and breathable film of resentment. Seems I’ve unwittingly chosen the seething-ill-will-long-term plan despite Dad’s condition.
“I hope Mom told you it’s skin cancer. A funny mole on my ear is all it is.”
“She did,” I lie, feeling the sting of having been classically lawyered by my own mom.
“If things could be different, Alex—” His voice fades into the static. I am burning to know what those “things” were that made him go, but under the seething-ill-will-long-term plan (SIWLTP), I don’t ask.
I let him have the last word and hang up.
The phone tumbles from my fingertips onto the bedspread, and I am enveloped by a thick silence that takes me back to hide-and-seek. I close my eyes and imagine the heavy thump of his footsteps. There are seconds between each one as he searches. If only the shit between me and Dad were as thin and see-through as a bed ruffle. If only we could pop out from under it smiling and say, “Game over.”
13. CHARLOTTE
Two Wednesdays Later
By the time the sun has burned away the morning mist, the first trickle of students is making its way up Rose Avenue to school. They’re calling for eighty-degree weather, another record for this time of year, and despite the cool mornings, everyone is in shorts and miniskirts without tights. I reach over and turn off the front window display lights that serve no purpose on such a bright morning and watch Henry open up shop across the street. Clockwork. The skinny freshman is teetering up the hill with his turtle shell of a backpack that’s fallen off his shoulders. His spindly arms, no longer protected by fluffy down, look like they’re going to break with the weight. Under the freezer, the good old tennis ball remains loyally wedged, denying the passage of time, denying change.
But when I reach for the nail file on the quiet radiator that two weeks later I’m still surprised not to find there, I am reminded that almost everything is different. When I think of chaos, I think of the apocalypse, and when I think of the apocalypse, I imagine the universe turning to dust. But chaos might not be a wholly sinister thing. Its most redeeming quality—and its scariest—is that it forces change. And as far as changes go, it turns out that chaos is in my corner. At least for now.
The week-old newspaper sits where the nail file used to be, and I pull it over to read. The article’s seven short paragraphs, the last one calling Peg and me heroes, is like a morning multivitamin. I read it every day and don’t imagine stopping until the ink is too smudged or the paper starts to disintegrate. I reimagine the burglary and am certain that if I’d had a second more to contemplate the survival odds of me and a nail file versus a robber with a gun, I would have stayed still. But that’s my friend chaos at her best. I didn’t have time to think before the adrenaline—yes, adrenaline!—took over. No adrenaline deficiency here. I carefully flip the yellowing, rippled paper to page two.
“Lincoln Kids’ Heroic Efforts to Nab RAB”
I skim through the article and straighten on my stool, shoulders back. The power of words. The name Pudge was no different except that it broke me down. But Margo doesn’t call me that anymore. In fact, since that evening at her house, she smiles at me in the hall. It’s not a big, lingering smile, but a tight-lipped, half second’s worth of one, and that’s good enough for me. There are even rare moments when the weight of her hallway presence lifts completely. That usually happens when I’m with Jarrid, but not always.
I run my fingers over the article’s photo of us next to my register. Peg is in the front with her red glasses on and the blanket in her hands, looking exactly like she did when I first met her. Behind her on the left are Alex and Zefi, and on the right are Jarrid and me. I run my finger over Jarrid’s easy smile that in two weeks’ time has smudged under my touch. I can no longer differentiate his teeth from his lips, his chin from his neck. Even his arm draped over my shoulder is almost rubbed out.
“Can you and Jarrid work a little overtime tonight, sweetie?” Dad has popped up front with a stack of receipts. “I’ll order you Chinese.”
He raises his eyebrows and drops them, twice, and I wish I could turn to dust, partly because I’ve been avoiding eye contact with Mom and Dad ever since they caught Jarrid with his arm around my waist last week. And partly because they’re just so damned enthusiastic about this romantic development.
“Sure,” I say, grabbing my phone to pretend-text.
“I’ve got to get to the bank,” Dad says. “Ask Jarrid to stock some more ice cream sandwiches in the freezer.”
The ice cream sandwiches are for Alex and Zefi, who, ever since the burglary, come in every day after school. Not because they want to relive that night or because they care so much about me or the “Miller landmark,” as the reporter called it, but because Dad promised them unlimited ice cream sandwiches through the end of the year as a thank-you for all their trouble the night of the burglary.
Dad whooshes out the door right about the time I hear Todd roar up the hill. But I notice that Alex isn’t riding shotgun. Most of the time, no matter how hard I try to make things happen, life slips by without anything to show for it. But then there are periods like this one. Rare little pockets of intense change crunched into a matter of days that remind me that sometimes I have to let go and let life take the reins. Just two weeks ago, I had a mini-crush on Alex and Jarrid was just, well, Jarrid. Two weeks ago, Margo was calling me Pudge and the cold war with Mom was going strong. I make a mental list of the changes and find comfort in them. The door chimes open, and the old tennis ball rolls out from under the freezer to Gus’s feet.
“Hey there, chiquita.” He picks it up and throws it to me.
“Coffee?” I turn around to pour him a cup as he heads to the freezer for a frozen dinner. “I don’t know how you can eat that for breakfast,” I say.
“It’s better for you than a piece of toast!” He rummages through the stack of frozen boxes for his favorite: turkey and gravy with baby peas.
My cell chimes, and I pull it to me quickly before Gus makes it to the counter.
I told Mom about us last night J
“You’re making that smile again,” Gus says. “Someone’s in love.”
I shake my head, obviously.
“One day I’ll figure out who he is.” Gus pats my shoulder.
My phone chimes again, and I feign disinterest in order to prove there is no guy. He squeezes behind the counter with his turkey dinner pinched under his arm and adds sugar to his coffee. While he opens the packets, I discretely slide open the new message.
I think I really like you
I listen to Gus as he stirs, and type fast.
Me too
The corners of my mouth are curling upward into a smile; I can’t help it. I close my eyes to let them roll back into my head. Bliss.
“Ta-da ta-da, Ta-da ta-da,” Gus hums the wedding hymn and drops his turkey dinner next to the register. “Just ring me up and let me eat in peace!” He chuckles and smacks the palm of his hand on the counter.
And that’s when it catches my eye. On the top of his hand is a scar. A deep, messy, bulbous scar. My scar. My heart sinks, not because there is a burglar in my midst, but because Gus is my friend. He’s been my parents’ friend since bef
ore I was born.
“You look like you’ve just seen a ghost!”
“Actually, I do have a boyfriend.” My voice is hollow, probably about as hollow as my stare. The fluttering inside me has come to a halt, leaving me half-dead.
“I knew it!” Gus looks up to the ceiling and presses his hands together like he’s saying a thank-you prayer, as if my having a boyfriend is the stuff miracles are made of.
I ring up his dinner, but my eyes are on the jagged scar located between his middle and index fingers, exactly where I planted the nail file two weeks ago.
While he prays, I fumble under the counter for the button, the new red button that Dad installed last week. Images of Gus—fixing our freezer last summer and the water heater the winter before, of his bright eyes when he tells his exaggerated stories, of his frozen dinners—bubble to consciousness all at once. When I find the button and push it, a bolt of sadness cracks me in two. For a second I wish I could take it back; I wish I could unpush the button. But that second of regret passes when I remember his threats and the stolen money and the fear. He’s not family.
“Well, I’d better get back to the station,” he says.
“We just got in some of that beef jerky you like,” I say, offering him one. My last “family” discount.
“Not so sure it’ll go well with my turkey-dinner breakfast,” he says, but he slips it from my hand anyway and walks out reading the plastic wrapper.
The door chimes closed behind him, and I sit stunned for minutes before I pick up the phone.
“I need you at the store, Mom. Don’t go to Gus’s just yet,” I say before she can ask any questions. “I love you.”
I hang up as the drone of distant sirens becomes progressively louder and sit frozen and breathless on my stool.
14. PEG
Two Wednesdays Later
The house smells like spaghetti, and it’s about time. It’s been two weeks since Mom promised me my favorite meal. I walk through the mudroom and down the hallway and can’t help but notice a new frame squeezed in between the brown-and-white Minnesotan ancestor and Yue Fei. It’s the article about the Rose Avenue Burglar, complete with the photo of the five of us. The navy frame rubs against the yellow one containing Yue Fei, and I can’t help but compare the photo of me with fake glasses and a shredded afghan draped over my arms to the watercolor of him with his feathered soldier’s helmet and red cape, his sword raised overhead. I’ll never be Chinese like he is, nor will I ever be his brand of hero. And as I breathe in the warm waft of pasta cooking and strip off my backpack and jean jacket instead of a hundred pounds of armor, I decide that I am more than okay with my hodgepodge heritage.
I follow the scent of tomato sauce to the kitchen, where I find Dad sporting one of Mom’s aprons. The flesh-colored straps, obviously not long enough for a proper bow tie at his thick waist, have been knotted together and look like a stumpy pig’s tail. He whisks around with the red spatula in hand when he hears me. There are gobs of motto-free aprons in the pantry, but Dad has chosen to wear the one marked “BBQ Queen.” Tomato sauce is splattered over the words, and I don’t think I’ve ever seen the counter so loaded with sundry bowls and dishes, all sprinkled with flour and seedy splotches from the vine tomatoes sautéing. I know they’re vine tomatoes because I’ve just stepped on a rogue vine that didn’t make it into the trash can. In fact, by the looks of the kitchen, there isn’t much that has made it to the trash can.
“Are you cooking a seven-course meal?”
“Does it look like it?” He’s turned back around to the steaming pot and stirs like he knows what he’s doing, which given the aroma, I think he might.
“Where’s Mom?”
“Getting up,” he says. “She pulled an all-nighter wrapping up that Shakespeare article she’s been working on.”
His voice is calm and he has that perpetual glimmer of controlled knowledge in his eye, but there’s something else there that I can’t discern, something wild that betrays this control.
“Are you working on a new project?” I ask.
“Nope.” He drops a pinch of oregano into the sizzling tomatoes and twirls back to the spice mill for the pepper.
“Dropping a blanket around someone’s feet is no cause for celebration,” I say.
“Who said we’re celebrating? We promised you spaghetti. That’s it,” he says. “Although Mom and I agree that the blanket move was unequivocally fearless.”
I hear the floorboards crackle overhead and wind my way upstairs to find Mom making the bed. She shimmies her way in between the bed and her nightstand to arrange the pillows, careful not to knock over the half-empty bottle of Coke and the china plate smudged with peanut butter and saltine crumbs. Pens are scattered on the floor below her pillow, and the books and notebooks that she usually keeps on the kitchen counter are in a pile on the floor near the pens.
“You told Dad.”
She jumps when she hears my voice, spinning around toward me in her faded green robe and silk Chinese slippers. Her hair is wet and slicked back behind her ears, which makes her cheeks seem fuller and her eyes rounder.
“Home already?”
I nod as she pulls me into her like she hasn’t seen me for months. I breathe in the lavender shower gel and coconut conditioner and close my eyes. My shoulders release and I sigh, giving in to the powers of Mom.
“I hid the newspaper from him as long as I could.” She pulls me away from her chest to look me in the eyes. Hers are bright and squinted happily. “It was only a matter of time, though.”
I nod as she plops onto the made bed, stretching out her hand for the bottle of Coke, which I hand to her. The plastic is sticky and room temperature, and I give it a shake to test for any remaining bubbles, but there are none.
“He’s so proud of you, Peg. Just like I told you he’d be.” Mom tips the bottle to her lips, and when she slides the bottle back onto the nightstand, I notice a framed photo of me behind a different plate of crackers and hardened slices of American cheese. This, the only framed picture in the room, usually sits on her dresser, but she’s moved it to the stand, opposite her pillow. It’s not a good picture by professional standards. My smile is forced, I’m not centered, and the focus is a bit fuzzy. She rolls into a fetal position facing the nightstand and gazes at a front-toothless version of myself, decked out in frilly new clothes.
“Do you remember this day?”
“Of course I do,” I say. “I don’t think I ever wore that jumper and ruffled shirt again.”
“Like a wedding dress.” Mom motions me to the edge of the bed and pulls me down inside her arms.
“It was like the clothes didn’t fit me after that day.”
In the photo, I am backed up against a brown steel door and holding a Strawberry Shortcake coloring book from the hospital gift shop. I know this scene by heart, beyond the limits of the camera’s frame. The old lady in light purple pacing the hallway to my left, the pretty candy striper to my right with a clipboard and a pen attached with a pink squiggly wire.
“It’s a terrible picture,” I say.
“Oh, I disagree,” Mom whispers. “It inspires me.”
I skim the photo for something new, a forgotten detail, but as I study my six-year-old self, from sparkly headband to magenta Mary Janes, I come up dry.
“Whenever I’m having writer’s block, I prop this photo close,” she says. “Look again, Peg.”
And so I do, this time from the bottom up, past the tights and the fists of excitement and the dozens of bracelets. And then I pull the frame closer. Maybe there is something. An indescribable air. “I was happy then,” I blurt only half-ironically.
“Oh, it’s much more beautiful than happiness.”
I feel her stare boring a hole in my skull as I search the photo for something more.
“Don’t you see that fire? That intensity in your eyes?
” She gives me a squeeze. “And you hadn’t even met her yet.”
“How preemptive of me.”
“Jeez, you sound just like your father.” She sighs. “It’s the idea of her,” Mom whispers into my ear. “The mere idea of her and a part of you was changed.”
At the time of the picture, I hadn’t held her in my arms or run my hands through her thin, black baby hair or felt her squeeze my index finger in her miniature fist or heard her cry or giggle that contagious, uncontrollable belly laugh. Maya was the unwitting hope of tents under a starlit sky and fishing trips to Lake West. Of plump, stumpy fingers, scabby knees, knotty hair, and the sweet smell of sweaty skin. The hope of slathers of kisses and cuddles and adventures and wonder. Wonder. I’d almost forgotten about it. Not the superhero variety, but the everyday, stomping-through-the-mud-for-earthworms, curious kind. I was whole back then.
“I’d bought that Strawberry Shortcake coloring book for her,” I say, holding back a landslide of Maya flashes. “Not for me.” I swallow hard. “She was that powerful an idea.” Tears sting my eyes.
“No, Peg. You were that powerful.” Mom holds my face in her palms and looks into my eyes. “You still are. Always have been.” She squeezes my cheeks. “You’re the one with wings.”
Wings. I shift more deeply into Mom’s arms, gaze into my six-year-old eyes, and let go. Lake West, secrets, her squinty smile like mine and Mom’s, spy missions in the wetlands, Christmas Eve. And bike rides. Just the thought of whooshing down the hill at the end of our road and I can feel the warm summer wind in my face. Charlotte had called it superhuman nature; Mom calls it wings.
“Maya was the idea of a lifetime,” I say.
“She still is,” Mom whispers. “And so are you, Peg. So are you.”
I nod into the pillow as I let that last idea take hold. That glimmer in Mom and Dad’s eyes. The twinkle in Maya’s. Maybe it has always had a little something to do with me. Maybe it always had a lot to do with me and I just couldn’t see it.
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