by Jenn Bishop
“Drew?”
It’s Filipe. With the worst timing possible.
“Hold on a sec,” I shout. I quickly check to make sure everything is as I found it. I step back out into the hallway, leaving Mom’s bedroom door slightly ajar. By the time I’m thumping down the stairs, I hear Filipe turn on the TV.
He’s slumped back on my sofa. “Our AC’s busted,” he says as he kicks off his sneakers. “Want to play Crash Landing?”
“Uh, okay,” I say. Any other day I would—who doesn’t want to play Crash Landing? I heard that in Japan and South Korea there are special centers to help people who are addicted to the game. But right now all I want is an empty house.
Filipe shoots me a funny look. “Did I interrupt something?”
“No,” I lie, settling into the sofa beside him. There’s no way I’ll be able to finish searching my mom’s room now that Filipe’s here. Still, a tiny part of me is glad he came over. Maybe hanging out with Theo was just a one-time thing, and that’s why he wanted to keep it one-on-one. It’s not every day that an eighth grader comes over your house to shoot hoops. I get that.
Filipe starts up the game. “So, what was the deal with that guy? Did he stay the night? I saw his bike there the next morning.”
I wish I could tell him. Just spell it out, like how I did earlier today with Audrey. But I don’t think I can, because then I’d have to talk about my dad, and we haven’t talked about him in forever.
With Audrey, I could just talk about Phil because she doesn’t know the truth about my dad. But Filipe does. Filipe was there through all of that. My dad’s not just some idea to him, he’s a real person.
And Filipe knew what things were like after. Even if we don’t talk about that time now, I know he remembers. I don’t know how he could forget.
Plus, what if he told Theo? Never mind if I’m wrong. No, I can’t tell him.
“Just some old friend of my mom’s,” I say.
“Not her boyfriend?” He makes his avatar, Argon28437, do the little dance he’s been practicing in the waiting area.
I fake a laugh. “Nope. Just passing through town.”
Suddenly the wait is over, and now Filipe’s avatar is being dropped from the plane. He zooms over the island, scouting out places to land. My favorite is the forest, but Filipe always goes for the more urban areas. He deploys the parachute.
“Too bad,” he says. “You could’ve ridden on that Harley.”
Filipe’s avatar is off and running, chopping down trucks and buildings to get supplies. I go into the kitchen to get us some snacks. I put some popcorn and cookies in a bowl and grab a few sodas from the fridge.
Filipe cracks open a Sprite and slurps from it.
How would it be if Phil were still here? Is he the kind of grown-up who plays video games? My dad sure wasn’t. Not modern video games, at least. He was a fan of the really old-school games, like at the arcade. He could PAC-MAN like nobody’s business.
But I couldn’t picture him here with Filipe and me. Nestled down into the sofa, or legs spread out on the floor, playing video games long into the night like we would on weekends, or those weeknights late in the summer when Mom finally gave up on bedtimes.
I could kind of picture Phil playing with us, though. He’d probably whip up some kind of interesting snack—like super-spicy popcorn—and I bet he’d have fun exploring the island. I can’t see him being into fighting people, like Filipe. Probably more into building forts and walls. Like me.
Filipe suddenly mutes the game. “What’s up with you?”
“Huh?”
“You’re not even paying attention. You’re not begging me to explore the forest or telling me to chase down Mermaidgyrl666. It’s like you’re not even here.”
“Sorry?” I say.
“Look, if you didn’t want me to come over, you could’ve just said so.”
“You let yourself into my house!” Of course I want him to come over—just not right now. I want to pretend that whole weird thing with Theo never happened. But I can’t say that, either. I decide to change the subject. “Do you want to go to the fair next week?”
“The county fair?”
As if there’s another one. We’ve only been going every summer for our whole lives.
Filipe scrunches his nose. “The rides there are weak. I’d rather go to Six Flags.”
Before I have a chance to say Six Flags is also an hour away and not what I was inviting him to in the first place—and that maybe the rides are weak, but the rest of the fair is fun—the front door opens. Mom’s got her arms full of groceries, and Xan’s feeling the need to demonstrate his latest tae kwon do moves.
“Be careful with the coffee table!” Mom says from the kitchen, but she’s a second too late. His kick just grazes the edge of the coffee table, enough to knock over my Dr Pepper. Brown liquid pools on the hardwood floor.
“I’m sorry,” Xan says. “It was an accident.”
“They always are, aren’t they?” Mom ruffles my brother’s hair.
I leap to get some paper towels to dry it up. By the time I’m back in the living room, the couch is empty. “Did Filipe leave?” I ask, setting the paper towels over the spill. I step on them, soaking up the spill real good.
“He had to head back for dinner,” Mom says. “Speaking of, I could use your help in the kitchen in a minute. Thanks, bud. I’d ask Xander to clean up his own spill, but you know how well that’d go.”
The floor is still sticky, so I grab some cleaning spray and go at the spill until the floor’s as smooth as it was before. If only there was a way to do that with Filipe—smooth over everything. But I don’t think it’s that easy.
* * *
Later that night, I lie awake in bed, waiting for that thunk when Mom puts her book on the bedside table, the click of her turning off her light. It’s after ten, so she should be going to sleep any minute now.
As far as she knows, I’m already asleep. My light’s been off for more than half an hour. The only thing keeping me awake is the bright glow of my phone’s screen, hidden under my covers. Plus the pounding of my heart as I imagine what I might find tonight.
Thunk. Click.
One thing that’s always been true about my mom is how quickly she falls asleep. Dad used to give her a hard time about it because it took him forever to go to sleep, but Mom could fall asleep anywhere. Long car rides, in the dark at the movies. She used to fall asleep on Xander’s bed back when he was little and needed someone in the room until he drifted off.
I wait until it’s been five minutes on my phone, and then I crack open my door and tiptoe down the hallway. The door to Mom’s bedroom is ajar and I can hear the tiny whistling sound her nose makes when she’s conked out.
I creep down the stairs and then flick on the lights. After helping Mom with supper and cleanup, then Xander’s bedtime story, there hasn’t been any time to look at the books in the living room. But maybe it’s better this way. Now I have all the time I need with no one interrupting me.
The place that makes the most sense to start is the big bookcase in the living room, because that’s where the oldest books are. Way at the top, those cheap tiny paperbacks, in the middle the bigger paperbacks and hardcovers, and down toward the bottom, everything oversize—coffee-table books, cookbooks, magazines, old college textbooks with the yellow “used” stickers. I get down on my knees, tracing the copies with my fingers to make sure I don’t miss anything.
A book about the Newport mansions, a cookbook from when Mom went through her vegetarian phase, old copies of Gourmet magazine. It’s got to be here somewhere.
My fingers hit a bound white book, no words on the spine. It’s thin, just the right width for a yearbook. Please be it. Holding my breath, I tug it out carefully, pulling out the book next to it just a bit so I know where to put it back. But when I have it out all the way, when I can see what it really is, I almost drop it.
Centered on the cover is a black-and-white photo of my mom and
dad, surrounded by their friends and family with sparklers in their hands. It must be from their wedding day. I’ve seen some pictures before—there used to be one on the mantel of just Mom and Dad, and another in the hallway upstairs, them with all their friends and family. The photographer must’ve asked them all to jump, so they were all up in the air, every one of them except for Mom’s roommate from college, Libby, who I guess wasn’t paying attention. But I’ve never seen this book before. The pages are stiff. Makes sense, I guess. No one’s turned these pages in years.
Inside, the pictures are in color. Photos of their wedding cake, Mom’s bouquet, her dress hanging on a fancy hanger with Mrs. twisted into the wire, their wedding bands on top of a velvet bag.
I figured Mom got rid of all this stuff. That a book like this would be sitting in one of those boxes in the shed out back. But maybe there are some things you can’t get rid of.
They look so young in the pictures, Mom and Dad. Not high school young, more like they just got out of college. That’s where they met in Boston. At least, I think? Mom was in grad school to be a librarian, Dad was in dental school.
I get to the page where they’re stuffing cake into each other’s mouths. Mom missed by a mile, probably because she was laughing so hard. Dad’s got frosting on his glasses.
He doesn’t look like a person who would ever do that, what he did. He’s too happy.
It would have made at least some sense if he’d been different. If he’d been the kind of person who wanted to sleep all day. Or if he had a drinking problem, like some adults. Something. But that wasn’t true.
He had everything. Everything nice he could have wanted. A nice house, a nice car, a nice job. Our life was fine three years ago. More than fine. It was great.
He stares back at me, smiling, laughing, his eyes twinkling. I can’t stand to look at him for one more second. I slam the photo album shut. Chuck it across the room. It hits the sofa, barely making a noise, which I guess is good, because the last thing I want to do is wake up Mom.
I don’t want you to be my dad.
I turn back to the shelf and stare at the books until my vision’s not so blurry anymore. I finish that whole shelf. No yearbook. Check the shelf below it. The one above. Double-check. Triple-check. Quadruple-check.
Mom moved a lot as a kid. Maybe she didn’t care about getting a yearbook because she barely knew her classmates after changing schools so many times. I guess it could be in her room, but now that I’m thinking about it, the bookshelves I ran out of time to check aren’t the right size for something as big as a yearbook. If it wasn’t on her bedside table, it’s probably not there.
I check the clock to see how long I’ve been down here, and I have to do a double-take when I see the time. Just after midnight.
When I go to get up, one of my legs has fallen asleep. It’s on pins and needles as I walk over to the couch to grab the wedding photo book. I can’t help myself from flipping through it one last time.
It’s the youngest I’ve ever seen my dad that I can remember. He doesn’t look like me. His eyes, his long straight nose, his thin mouth. I don’t look like him. Not really. No, not at all.
“Maybe it was never you,” I whisper to that picture of him, his eyes full of love as he stares back at Mom.
After I’ve shoved the book back into its place, I flick off the light downstairs.
Passing by Mom’s room, I peek inside. She’s got her back toward me, her head facing the window. The curtains sway in a cool breeze. What does she think about Dad now? Does she still hate him sometimes? Has she forgiven him?
I crawl back under my covers. Even though it’s super late, my mind’s too awake to fall asleep, so I reach for my phone.
There aren’t any pictures of Dad there. I didn’t get the phone until fifth grade. But there are a few pictures of him floating around online. Like the one that used to be on the website for his dental office. He’s wearing a blue button-down shirt, a tie, and a blazer, and standing in front of some ivy-covered wall the photographer must have picked out. His smile is closed-mouth, which is kind of funny when you think about it. Wouldn’t he want his patients to know he has nice teeth?
I stare at that picture so long it’s got to be burned into my retinas.
I hate that picture because it’s exactly how I remember him now. I remember that picture more than I remember the actual him. But that picture is all I have left.
And one day, one day it’s not going to be there when I search for it. The website for his office is long gone. I don’t even know why that picture is still findable. Google made some kind of mistake. And someday they’re going to fix it and that last picture of Dad will be gone too. Gone forever.
17
THE FOLLOWING MORNING AT THE library, Audrey’s helping me get supplies ready for tomorrow’s craft program when I break the news to her. “I couldn’t find the yearbook.”
“What about the spit?”
“I didn’t look for his spit!”
A mom browsing the picture books with a baby swaddled to her chest cranes her neck, shooting me a funny look.
I lower my voice. “But I was thinking … you know how upstairs we have all the yearbooks for the high school? In the local history room?”
“But he didn’t grow up here.”
“I know.” Typical Audrey. Always assuming she’s a few steps ahead of me, when actually sometimes I can be a few steps ahead of her. “But there’s a way to get stuff from other libraries, right? Even faraway ones.”
“Interlibrary loan!” Audrey says.
“Exactly. You in?”
“In … what?” Audrey asks.
“Like, do you want to help me?”
“Oh, sure.” She drops the basket of scissors, scattering kid-safe scissors all over the stained carpet.
I reach down to help her pick them up, accidentally grabbing the same one she’s going for. Audrey pulls her hand away fast.
“How about this afternoon?” I ask, standing up. “When the zoo guy comes?”
“Audrey?” Mrs. Eisenberg calls over. “Can you give me a hand here? The screen’s freezing up again.”
“I better go help Mrs. Eisenberg.” Audrey sets the basket of scissors down on the table.
* * *
That afternoon Mrs. Eisenberg is in the program room with a bunch of elementary school kids and a guy from the Roger Williams Zoo who comes every summer with all kinds of animals. You can always tell which day he’s coming because it’s the one day all summer that Mrs. Eisenberg puts on makeup. And I don’t think it’s to impress the kinkajou.
Right before the program, there were a bunch of kids hanging out at the coloring tables. I sent Audrey over with some new crayons, thinking that could help win them over. She was doing such a good job talking to them about their drawings that she didn’t even catch me flashing her a thumbs-up from across the room.
For a second I thought I might have to save her with a cough when she started talking about Salvador Dalí and Pablo Picasso while they stared back at her blankly, but then she pulled out a save, talking about what fun colors they used.
Maybe she’s not as scared of kids as she thought. (Well, so long as none of them sneeze on her.)
Down here now there’s just a nanny with a baby, grabbing some board books and visiting the fish in the aquarium. Audrey is at Mrs. Eisenberg’s computer organizing files, and I’m trying to figure out which book to zombify for my next story-hour puppet show. Mrs. Eisenberg pulled a whole stack of them for me earlier.
I’ve just finished Creepy Carrots—that book doesn’t need to be zombified at all, it’s already too frightening for most toddlers—when I hear Audrey whisper, “Drew!” from across the room.
I put Creepy Carrots in the “no” pile and head over to the computer.
“So I’ve been thinking …” Audrey scoots over on her chair, making room for me.
“Yeah?” I say as I squeeze in. The chair looked bigger before, and now that I’m sitting in
it, I can feel my leg against Audrey’s, and I wish I’d just pulled up another chair. Too late now. I try to shift my leg over the tiniest bit, but it’s still kind of touching Audrey’s.
“Loretta is in charge of interlibrary loans.”
“Yeah.”
“That’s a problem.”
“Why?”
“Because she shares an office with your mom. Don’t you think she’ll say something to your mom if you place an interlibrary loan?”
“I hadn’t thought about that.…”
“Well, good thing you have me thinking about all the possibilities.”
Yeah, Audrey. I just love having someone tell me to use my brain. It’s the best.
I take a deep breath. It’s not the first time Audrey’s gotten on my nerves, and I’m sure it won’t be the last. But I need her. And anyway, I already told her my secret—well, part of it. We’re in this together now. “So, what should we do?”
“We’re going to have to create a fake patron.”
“Wait—what?”
“Someone else needs this yearbook. For a different reason. Actually, not just somebody else. Eliza P. Muffinbottom.”
“Who the heck is that?”
Audrey clicks at the bottom of the screen, opening the library database.
“You didn’t … ,” I start to say.
But no.
She did.
The library database shows a person with library card bar code number 20572847575375. Eliza P. Muffinbottom, birth date: 3/14/1946, address: 134 Thistle Lane, Smithtown, Rhode Island 02846.
“We can delete her when we’re done.”
“You made a library card for a fake person?”
Audrey glares at me. I didn’t say it that loud.
I twist my neck to see if the nanny heard us, but she’s in the rocking chair reading to that baby, and she doesn’t seem to have noticed.
“Not a library card.” Audrey lowers her voice to a whisper. “Just a record.”
“How are we even going to make this work? You planning to dress up as Mrs. Muffinbottom? Or is that on me?”