by Jenn Bishop
From the couch, Phil stares at me as if I did something terribly wrong to upset my mom.
“All I did was go outside. It’s my own backyard.” That ball in my throat is back, growing larger by the second as my eyes shift from Mom to Phil, Phil to Mom. What else am I supposed to say?
“Can I go to my room now?” The voice that comes out of my throat sounds small. Weak. Like it’s me trapped in the bottom of a boat inside a bottle.
Mom nods, but as I head upstairs, I can hear their voices. Mom’s is quiet; Phil’s a little too loud. She’s still upset, but he’s calming her down. Or trying to. It doesn’t make any sense. I didn’t even go anywhere. I mean, why would she think something bad happened? The whole time I was a hundred feet away. All she had to do was look for me. But no, to really do that, she would have to stop thinking about Phil for five seconds.
Back in my bedroom, my cell phone is plugged into the charger. When I pick it up, I see the missed calls that came in while I was outside. Five of them, all from Mom. And the texts: Where are you? Please call me.
I hate that I made her worry about me. One by one I swipe to delete the messages. I’ve just deleted the last one when my phone buzzes with a brand-new text from Filipe. Dude, where’d you go? Your mom was freaking out.
Outside in the shed, I type. She didn’t look there.
What’s even in there?
All that’s left of my dad. Except I can’t type that. I can’t say stuff like that to Filipe. He’d never get it. His dad is normal. His dad is alive.
Just some old stuff. I was bored. NBD.
Are you in trouble?
IDK.
There’s a knock on my door.
Hold on, I text him, then silence my phone and slide it under the unmade covers of my bed. I clear my throat. “Yeah?”
My mom opens the door. “Can we talk for a few minutes, hon?”
I shrug.
She closes the door behind her and sits down on my bed by the pillow. “You’re not in trouble,” Mom says, her voice calmer now. “In case you were wondering.”
“Okay.”
“It was foolish of me not to think to look outside. But it was so quiet after you put Xan to bed, and when I checked in your room, Drew, you were gone, and I … I panicked.”
“You’re just mad I made you look bad in front of Phil.”
Mom looks taken aback. “Hon, that’s not it at all.”
What is it, then? But I don’t ask. Honestly, I just want to go to bed. Pretend this whole night didn’t happen, wake up, and find Phil’s motorcycle gone. He’s on a bike trip? Cool. Maybe he needs to hit the road a little early. Buh-bye. See ya.
Mom folds down the top of my sheet, tidying my bed. It’s pointless. I’m about to go to sleep in it anyway. “You know, we need to talk about things like we promised. Not let them fester until they’re so big we don’t think we can handle them.”
She waits for me to say something back. But there’s nothing to say. She’s the one who didn’t communicate something. She’s the one who kept a secret. So maybe it isn’t as big as those secrets Dad kept, but it’s a secret all the same. She knew Phil was coming. She knew and she didn’t tell me.
“Drew.” Mom grabs for my hand like I’m some little kid. I jerk it back. “Tell me what’s going through your head. I’m here for you.”
“Trust me, you don’t want to hear it.” I sit on my hands.
“That’s not true.”
I suck in a deep breath. Once I start, I might not be able to stop. It’ll all come flooding out of me, fire-hydrant style. But she’s still waiting, so I let loose. “Phil Pittman, Mom? Is that even his real name? I mean, what kind of name is that? And what the heck is he doing here? How long did you know he was going to come? You could’ve said something to Xan and me like with those other dates. How come you didn’t? That’s messed up, you know?”
My heart thunders in my chest as I stare back at Mom.
You didn’t really want to know all of that, did you?
Mom reaches a hand back, playing with my sheet again. “Well, that was honest, at least. You’re right, though. I’m sorry things didn’t go according to plan this time. I always intended to tell you and your brother about Phil’s visit in advance. What can I say? He came two weeks earlier than he was supposed to, catching everyone—all of us, me included—by surprise. You know, I probably would’ve cleaned up the house a little if I’d known he was coming today.” She laughs for a second, her eyes pleading with me.
I want to be able to buy it. But all I can hear is what Filipe said. And I don’t have enough to prove him wrong. Not yet. Especially with the way Phil kept looking at Mom during dinner. Never mind how Mom looked at him.
“Is there anything else?” Mom twists her wedding ring and suddenly my heart slows down. It’s still there. What does that mean? If she was really interested in Phil, she’d take it off, right? When your husband dies, you don’t have to keep wearing the ring forever. “I’m happy to tell you a little more about how this all came together, if that would help.”
I shrug. “Fine.”
“A few months ago, Phil and I connected on Facebook. We sent a few messages back and forth. You know, just two old friends finding each other. Happens all the time these days with social media. I told him he was welcome to stay with us for a few days when he made it out to Rhode Island. That was supposed to be the week after the Fourth of July, but when Steve from our class broke his leg on a hike out in Western Mass, Phil decided to swing through Rhode Island ahead of schedule.”
“So where’s he from?”
“Phil or Steve?”
I don’t care about some mutual friend named Steve. “Phil.”
“He’s kind of between places right now.”
“He’s homeless? Does he even have a job?”
“Andrew James McCormack.” Mom’s voice turns stern. “I didn’t raise you to speak like this. That’s not how we treat … anyone.” She stares back at me like she doesn’t even recognize her own son. I know the feeling.
I wish I’d just gone over to Filipe’s instead of the shed. Then maybe I could’ve spent the night. Been anywhere but here.
Mom glances at the clock on my nightstand. “It’s getting late and I need to set up the guest bedroom for Phil.” She stands up, still watching me. That look of shock lingers on her face. Like she can’t believe I’d have the nerve to say that stuff about Phil.
She doesn’t correct any of the things I said, though, so maybe I wasn’t wrong.
She pauses by my door, like maybe she wants to say something else, but then she tucks a piece of hair behind her ear and closes her mouth. “Good night.”
“Night,” I mutter.
She closes the door tight behind her, and finally I’m alone.
A stack of books from the library sits on my bedside table—the new Rick Riordan, this nonfiction book about spies, and a couple novels from the seventh-grade summer reading list. I flip through them for a few minutes, but nothing holds my attention.
And then out of nowhere it hits me, why Mom was so panicked when she couldn’t find me.
Does she worry I’m like Dad? Or that I could be someday? That I’d turn into him?
There are so many things I still wonder, but I’m afraid to ask. Never mind; who do you even ask a question like that to? Not Filipe, that’s for sure. And not Mom. It would only freak her out. Especially if she’s already worried about it.
Do you wake up one day wanting to kill yourself? Or is it something you think about for a while first? For days, weeks, months. Years?
Both sound so awful, I don’t know which is worse. Or which was true for Dad.
I wish she’d just told me that was why she was so worried. Because then I could have told her without freaking her out that, no, I’m not like that at all. I would never. Could never.
Except—what if it was in Dad’s DNA, what he did? Did he pass it along to me?
I bolt out of bed, shivering at the thought. No
one’s in the bathroom across the hall, so I use this chance to wash up. I brush my teeth forever, wishing that fear away, but it’s like it’s lodged in my brain now.
When I climb back into bed, I open up the Rick Riordan. His books always take me on an adventure somewhere else, far away from my problems. This one’s no different, and before I know it, I’m on page fifty, barely able to keep my eyes open. I slip in my bookmark and shut off the light.
As I’m starting to doze off, I hear Mom’s footsteps on the stairs, accompanied by heavier ones. “Now’s not the time to tell him,” she says. “He’s not ready yet.”
Tell who what? Ready for … what?
Does she mean me?
But I can barely hold the question in my mind for more than a few seconds before I drift off to sleep.
7
WHEN I WAKE UP, IT’S already light out. Five thirty is way, way too early to get up, so I roll onto my other side, shut my eyes, and try to push back the memories of everything that happened last night.
Easier said than done.
Just as I’m starting to fall back to sleep, I hear a noise like the sound of two friends high-fiving each other. Again. Again. And again. What the heck? Eyes open, I listen harder. “Six. Seven. Eight.” The counting is coming from our backyard.
I tiptoe over to the window and then quickly pull my head to the side and out of sight. Facing my window, doing jumping jacks in his pajama pants and a T-shirt, is Phil.
“Thirty-two. Thirty-three. Thirty-four.”
What. A. Weirdo.
I peek again, this time for longer. Phil stares straight ahead, not up at the second floor where I am. I scan the yard. As far as I can tell, Mom isn’t out there and neither is Xander.
What kind of person does jumping jacks at five thirty in the morning?
When I get back into bed, I can still hear him. “Fifty-seven. Fifty-eight. Fifty-nine.” On and on and on. What does he think our house is, some kind of army boot camp? The rest of us are trying to sleep, you know?
Finally I press both hands to my ears. Even though it sounds like the ocean, at least I don’t have to listen to him.
* * *
I wake up again to the sound of the bathroom shower and, from the living room, Xander’s cartoons. I toss on some clean clothes and make my way down the stairs.
It smells like bacon and pancakes and coffee. My stomach rumbles. Mom never cooks breakfast on weekdays unless it’s one of our birthdays—she’s too busy running around to get us all out the door in time.
I round the corner into the kitchen. Phil’s got his back to me as he whisks a bowl next to the stove. Xan is sitting at the counter, dunking pancakes in syrup.
“Looks like somebody’s up and at ’em,” Phil says as he transfers some bacon to a plate covered with paper towels.
“His name’s not Adam, it’s Drew!” Xander giggles.
“You want chocolate chips or blueberries in your pancakes?”
I reach in the cupboard for some cereal. “No thanks.”
“Not much of a breakfast person?”
I shake the box of granola. There’s barely any left.
“Not much of a morning person?”
“Looks like you are,” I mutter, thinking back to earlier this morning.
“You got me.” He tosses some frozen blueberries into the half-cooked pancakes on the stove. “Always been a morning person.”
I scoot out of Phil’s way in search of some milk for my granola.
“Sorry for taking over your kitchen,” Phil says. “Thought your mom might appreciate a morning off kitchen duty.”
I clink a spoon into my bowl. A morning off? Does he think I never help out around here? That it isn’t me getting Xan his breakfast most mornings while Mom’s upstairs blow-drying her hair and getting dressed for work?
“I hear you’re heading off to the library with your mom soon. You both bring a lunch? Anything I can make?”
I leave my granola behind and hop over to the fridge before he can try to take over this, too. “I’m twelve,” I say. “I’ve been making my own lunch for years.”
Phil raises both hands up in the air like he’s been caught red-handed and Xan laughs like Phil’s hilarious. Traitor. Phil knows how to get my brother on his side: right through his stomach. He’ll have to work a lot harder with me.
I finish slapping together a PB and J and take my soggy granola into the living room, where I turn up the TV volume as high as I can get away with and sling my feet over the side of the sofa.
Right after my dad died, my grandma flew out from California to stay with us. The morning before her flight back to California, three days after the funeral, Grandma pulled me aside. She bent her knees so she was at my height. Her breath smelled like cigarettes covered up with cinnamon chewing gum.
“You’ve got to help your mother around the house now that your father, well …” Like everyone else, she had trouble saying the words. Either she didn’t want to or she didn’t know how. “You’re the man of the house now, Drew. But you can handle it. You’ve always been a responsible little boy. You keep an eye on your mother, you hear?”
I heard. Loud and clear.
“Okay, Grandma.”
She smiled and eased herself back up to standing and called for a cab to take her to the airport.
I was nine. She was a grown-up. So I took her at her word. It was my job, mine, to keep everything together. No one was going to swoop in and save us. It was on me.
Who does Phil think he is, anyway? Coming in here, trying to take over everything. Someone does something like that, it makes you wonder. The guy’s got to have some kind of ulterior motive, right?
Xander’s too little to think twice about it, but not me. No, Phil’s got an agenda, secret or not, and I’m going to get to the bottom of it.
8
LATER THAT MORNING AT THE library, I’ve just finished helping the last kid from morning story hour pick out his summer reading prize when I hear a whimper come from the nonfiction section.
“Audrey, did you hear that?”
Audrey whips around in her rolling chair at the computer, where Mrs. Eisenberg left her to look at websites for different STEM projects. “Hear what?”
I strain my ears. Sniffles, I’m sure of it.
“Can you hand out some prizes if anyone needs help?”
Until Mrs. Eisenberg comes back from her meeting upstairs, Audrey and I are in charge. As much as Audrey will let me be in charge of anything. Okay, I’ll be honest, it pretty much means Audrey’s in charge.
I get up from behind Mrs. Eisenberg’s desk, where she keeps the summer reading prizes, and walk over to the nonfiction section.
A little boy, maybe three years old, sits with his back against the shelves that hold the fairy-tale books. Tears stream down his round, red cheeks.
“Hey there.” I crouch down and use my quiet voice. “It’s okay, buddy. Who’d you come here with?”
He gulps back some tears. “I want my mommy.”
“Did you come here with her?”
He stares back at me, his face blank.
“Who did you come here with?” I stand up for a second and wave at Audrey. “Can you give me a hand?”
I squat back down next to him. “We’re going to get in touch with your mom or dad or babysitter. Don’t worry. What’s your name?”
He rubs his eyes with a chubby little fist. “Benny.”
“Okay, Benny. I’m Drew.” Audrey comes to a stop right next to me. “And this is Audrey.”
“Why’s he crying?” she asks.
“Why do you think, Audrey? He’s lost.”
“Oh,” she says. “Oh no. Someone left him here? Who leaves a little kid at the library all by themselves?” Her eyes look strangely panicked. Get it together, Audrey. He’s a three-year-old, not a grizzly bear.
“Audrey.” My voice gets sharp. “You’re not helping.”
I reach my hand out for Benny’s. “Come with me. We’re going to go
use the intercom! Doesn’t that sound fun?”
“But Mrs. Eisenberg said …”
“She’s not here right now,” I snap at Audrey. “We’re in charge.” Actually, that’s wrong. If someone is taking charge right now, it’s me.
Benny clutches my hand as we walk back over to Mrs. Eisenberg’s desk, where her big black phone sits next to stacks of catalogs and magazines. The thing’s got at least a dozen buttons and doubles as an intercom. Sure, Mrs. Eisenberg showed me how to use it last summer, but we haven’t had any emergencies since then and I barely remember how it works. Still. One look at Benny’s trembling lower lip tells me some things are worth doing, even if you might make a mistake.
I lift up the receiver and push the intercom button. “Hello? Is this thing on?” I can’t hear anything. Hmm. I try again, pushing the intercom button, and then pick up the receiver. “Hello?” This time, my voice blares out from the phone’s speaker. That must mean it’s blaring out of the speakers on all the phones upstairs.
“If you came to the library with Benny, he’s still down in the children’s room. Um …” What am I supposed to say next? We never practiced this part, and we haven’t had any lost kids here before. But I heard them do it at the grocery store once.
“Again, that’s Benny. He’s, I think, three? And he’s down in the children’s room with, uh, me, Drew.” Audrey glares at me. Do I have to include her too? Oh, fine. “And Audrey,” I add.
It’s only when I hang up the phone that I can feel my heart pounding in my ears.
“What if nobody comes?” Audrey says. Clearly she’s seen too many stories on the news about kids getting abandoned. His mom or dad is probably somewhere in the library. One of those parents who think the librarian’s a free babysitter. Still, I know I’ll feel better once Benny’s back in their arms.
“I’m sure someone’s going to come right away.” I glance at Benny, whose eyes still look big and worried.
“I have an idea!” I say in my puppet performer voice—all confidence and smiles. Fake it till you make it, right? “Hey, Benny, would you want to choose something from this box to play with while we wait?” I pull out one of the prize boxes and place it in front of Benny.