Center of Gravity

by Shaunta Grimes

  “Oh man,” Jay Jay says under his breath. “I’m sorry.”

  He kneels beside me and starts to pick up my cards from the sand. They’re bright white, so even in the failing light, they shine.

  “Fifty-two,” I say, even though I know I sound like a crazy person. “I have fifty-two.”

  “Fifty-two what?” he asks, holding one of the cards up. “What are these?”

  I pull the card from his fingers and put it in my box. “Never mind.”

  “But seriously.” He picks up another one and brushes sand from it. “What are they?”

  “Kids, okay?” I take that one, too. “They’re missing kids.”

  Jay Jay picks up a third card and holds it close to his nose, then pulls it away sharply. “Like from milk cartons.”

  “Yes, exactly like from milk cartons.” Fine. Just fine. I didn’t want any friends in California anyway. I pull a card from the firepit and rub it against my T-shirt. “So, what even is this place?”

  “A clubhouse, I guess, like you said.” He adds a few more cards to the box. “So is that fifty-two?”

  I can’t see him well enough now to know if he’s making fun of me. I also can’t leave this clubhouse without all fifty-two of my cards, so I sit on the sand and start to count them.

  He stands across from me, watching with his strange eyes.

  Fifty-one. I count again, to be sure, then set the box aside and peer into the shopping cart firepit again. Jay Jay gets on his hands and knees in the sand and starts to feel around. “How many are you missing?”

  “One.” I won’t know which one until I get home and put them back in order. If I can make myself leave this cave without all of my cards. Come on. Come on, please, where are you?

  I don’t realize that I’m crying until Jay Jay says, “Even if we don’t find it tonight, we can look in the morning. It’ll be okay.”

  His voice is soft and slow, like he’s trying to calm a scared animal.

  I want to stand up and brush off my knees and say, Great, thanks. Instead, I reach my hand down into the firepit and sift through the ashes.

  Right now, this is about as embarrassing as turning over every milk carton in the cooler at school. In about sixty seconds, it’s going to turn into the most embarrassing thing ever. He’s going to have to go get my dad. I can feel it, churning in the pit of my stomach. This is the moment that will define my California experience, and it won’t be good.

  I am going to be a friendless half orphan forever.

  “Found it!” Jay Jay holds up a white square of waxed cardboard.

  I exhale as he puts it in my box. I don’t want to look at him. If he’s in my grade, we’re going to be at school together in a couple of months. If he’s one of the popular kids, this is going to be so bad.

  Maybe by September he’ll forget all about me.

  Or maybe … “Do you live with your grandma?”

  Maybe he’s just visiting.

  “Yeah,” he says. “My mom and dad, they’re kind of a mess. I haven’t seen them in a long time.”

  I wince. I knew I shouldn’t have asked. “I’m sorry.”

  “So I didn’t even know your house was for sale,” he says when the silence gets awkward.

  I’m completely thrown off guard. “What?”

  “You just moved in behind us? On the corner? I didn’t know that family moved.”

  “Yeah,” I say, finally looking up at him.

  “I didn’t even know that house was for sale.”

  “Oh. I don’t think … I mean, my—Lila—grew up in it. I don’t think it was for sale.”

  “You know Lila?”

  “Yeah, she’s my—” Nope. I still can’t say it. “My dad married her.”

  “Your dad is married to Lila O’Neil?”

  I don’t even know my dad’s wife’s last name. I guess it’s Hart now, but I don’t know what it was before. “I think so.”

  “You think so?”

  My face burns again. “It was pretty sudden. Do you know her?”

  “Sure,” he says. “I mean, if she’s Lila O’Neil. Real pretty blond girl? Tall.”

  That’s her. “Yeah.”

  “She’s friends with my aunt Lucy,” he says. “But she’s only like twenty-two or something, right?”

  “Twenty-three.”

  Jay Jay makes a little sound of understanding. “Well, tell her ‘hey’ for me.”

  “Yeah, sure.” I can barely tell her “hey” for myself, but whatever. “I better go.”

  “You should come hang out with us tomorrow,” Jay Jay says.

  I look up at him, trying to decide if he’s serious. “Why?”

  He shrugs. “I figured you probably don’t know anyone yet.”

  “But you think I’m a total freak now.”

  “I don’t think that.”

  For some reason, I’m angry all over again. “Well, maybe you should. My dad and Lila do.”

  “Yeah?” He shrugs both shoulders and looks away from me, at the sand between his feet. “Well, I’m pretty sure that my mom only had me so she could make my grandma take care of a black kid.”

  Balance is restored so quickly that it makes my head spin. “What?”

  He shrugs. It surprises me that he understands balance. He seems to know that the only way to make things okay is to say something that makes him as torn open as I feel right now. I have no idea how to respond to what he said about his mother and his grandmother, except to say, “You really think your mom did that?”

  He shrugs again. “I don’t know. Maybe not.”

  I stand up, holding tight to my box. “I really need to get home. My dad’s going to lose it if he finds out I left.”

  “Oh.” He seems disappointed. That makes me feel kind of good.

  I left my only real friend a thousand miles away, and even though she didn’t seem real upset about it, I miss her. And now that a maybe friend, a maybe-maybe one anyway, is standing right in front of me after dark, under the stairs on the beach, I’m afraid if I move, he might pop like a bubble.

  “So. Want to hang out tomorrow then?” he asks, and everything slides back into the range of normal.

  “Yeah.” Whatever, no big deal. “Sure.”

  He looks around. “Want to meet me here?”

  I have a maybe-maybe friend, and I’m meeting him tomorrow in a clubhouse. “Uh-huh.”

  “So, like nine or so?” he asks. “My grandma won’t let me leave the house until after breakfast.”

  I start to walk around the stairs. Nine is early for summer, but I don’t care. “That sounds okay.”

  He walks up to the bluff with me, and then across the street. He doesn’t just go home. He waits at the corner while I walk toward Lila’s house.

  “Oh, hey!” he calls out. “Are you in Lila’s old room?”

  I turn back. “Yeah.”

  He points toward the back side of the Haunted Mansion. “See that window? The one on the tower thing?”

  I look at it and nod.

  “That’s my aunt Lucy’s bedroom.” It’s even more like Rapunzel’s tower than mine is. “She’s in Oregon at school now, but they used to leave messages for each other in the windows. Maybe we can do that.”

  I nod again, because I’m not sure what to say.

  “Okay,” he says. “Night.”

  He stays there, though, and waits until I’m walking up the staircase back to the balcony outside Lila’s old bedroom.

  FIVE

  After I sneak into the room that isn’t really mine, I stop and listen. I don’t hear anything from the bedroom below.

  I’m not ready to think about what that means, so I decide that Dad and Lila are asleep or watching TV downstairs, even though I don’t hear that either. I put on my pajamas and lie down. Since I know they’re all there, I’m fine with putting my missing kids in order tomorrow.

  I stay fine with that right up until I start to wonder about Lila. How long has my dad known her, anyway? I think about ho
w he used to come home close to when I got out of school. Especially right after Mom died.

  And then it was later, six before he got home.

  Then seven. Then we were eating pizza for dinner at eight thirty.

  Because he was with Lila.

  After trying to sleep for an hour, I flip on the little lamp clamped to the edge of the changing table and sit up.

  God, I’m homesick.

  I miss Denver. I miss Megan and my soccer team. I miss when everything in my life was normal. Not four days ago when we left Denver. Seven-hundred and fifty-eight days ago, before Mom got sick. I miss not feeling like anyone was just putting up with me. I miss not thinking about stupid milk cartons.

  I reach for my soccer ball and lie back on the bed, throwing it up and catching it over and over while I get lost in a fantasy about running away.

  Not from home. Running away to home.

  Maybe Megan’s parents would take me in. We’re on the same soccer team. Or we used to be. And I pretty much spent as many nights at their house as I did at my own since kindergarten. At least until the whole milk-carton thing.

  Maybe I can go back home and leave my milk-carton kids in Los Angeles. We’ll be Meg and Tesseract again, instead of Megan and Half-Orphan Girl.

  I get so caught up in my daydream that I miss the ball, and instead of landing in my hands, it bounces off my face and thuds to the hardwood floor.

  I sit up and cover my mouth with my hand to keep from crying out. A little too late, though. A single squeal escapes me. It’s not like I haven’t taken a ball to the face before, but usually I’m at least somewhat prepared for it. And usually it isn’t a direct hit to my nose.

  I stay there for a few minutes, my nose throbbing. When I’m sure no one is going to come check on me, I reach for my milk-carton kids and the box of tissues that Lila left on the edge of the changing table.

  I think about burying my shoebox in the sand at the beach. Or pitching the cards, one at a time, into the surf. I imagine fish nibbling at the corners until the cardboard is gone. And then Lila buying the fish at the supermarket and making tacos out of them.

  I take the stack of cards and place it on the bed. One card at a time, I pick them up and carefully brush them off. I say each name, repeat each statistic. Every ounce of information I can take from what the Center for Missing and Exploited Children has printed on the back of a milk carton.

  I alphabetize the cards as I work. These kids are missing or exploited. Or both, I suppose. But in my shoebox, I put them where they belong.

  Fat, quiet tears fall down my face, and my aching nose starts to run.

  * * *

  When I wake up the next morning, my eyes are swollen. I can barely open them. And my nose feels weird and stiff from getting bopped by my soccer ball.

  The little alarm clock on the desk in the closet says it’s eight a.m.

  “Perfect.” I rub my hands gingerly over my eyes. Nothing like looking like a mess in front of people who already think you are one.

  I sit on the floor and open my suitcase and try to decide what to put on. A sundress is too fancy. Jean shorts and a tank top is too not fancy. I finally decide on the shorts and a red-and-white-striped top Gran gave me for my birthday last year.

  I don’t have a mirror in my new bedroom, but I don’t need one to know that I don’t look like the girls on the cover of Seventeen magazine, like Lila does.

  No one will ever describe me as tall and blond and pretty.

  Dad says I look like Mom. That used to make me happy, even if I didn’t really believe it. Mom wasn’t mousy like me. She was beautiful.

  I remember curling next to her in her hospital bed a few weeks before she died. She took my hand and ran her fingers along mine. She was so small. Like the Incredible Shrinking Woman. See how our hands are the same, Tessa?

  They were. And my hair is the same color as hers, too. I have brown eyes like Dad, but they are round and wide set, like Mom’s were.

  * * *

  Cold water from the bathroom sink doesn’t do anything except feel nice. My eyelids are still red and puffy. I must have cried in my sleep half the night. At least my nose looks more normal than it feels. I get a washcloth wet and hold it against my eyes.

  I finally accept that I’m not going to make myself look normal with cold water and a washcloth, so I pull my brush through my hair and wrestle it into a ponytail instead. I hesitate a minute, then pull the fistful of hair up higher and to the right, the way Lila wore hers the first time I met her.

  “You are definitely not a model,” I say to my reflection, but I pull an elastic band around the ponytail and keep it that way.

  * * *

  “Morning,” Lila says when I go into the kitchen. She’s washing dishes. I feel even more tongue-tied around her than I did the day before. And, too late, I realize I don’t want her to see that I’ve copied her hairstyle. I reach up for the elastic band, but she turns to see me before I can pull it out.

  “Oh, cute!” She tilts her head. “I’ll show you how to use my crimper, if you want.”

  “Oh. Uh … thanks.” Apparently, my jaw is still rusty. I finally find the words to ask, “Where’s my dad?”

  “He’s gone to meet with the principal at the high school.”

  “He’s not here?” Dad left me with Lila and didn’t even say anything? “When will he be back?”

  “I’m not sure.” Lila looks at my swollen eyes, then away from them. “Is there anything special you want to do today?”

  Tears sting my burning eyes, and I hold the washcloth to them again, hiding behind the cool, wet terry cloth.

  I’d planned on asking Dad if I can hang out with Jay Jay. I hate that I have to ask Lila instead. Not because I mind so much, but because I still haven’t figured out how to talk to her.

  “Tessa, what’s wrong?”

  Lila takes a step toward me, and I back up. “Can I go to the beach?”

  Lila looks around the kitchen like maybe I’m asking someone else. She finally takes a breath and says, “I guess it’s okay.”

  “Thanks.” I head for the back door.

  “Do you want me to go with you?”

  My side ponytail thwaps my ear when I shake my head. I should tell her that I’m meeting Jay Jay, but instead I just say, “No.”

  “Hang on.” She reaches into her pocket and brings out a five-dollar bill. “There’s a little shop about two blocks up First Street that sells the best donuts I’ve ever had. I used to get one on my way to school every morning.”

  Right. Because she gets to live where she’s always lived. Two blocks from her favorite donut shop.

  I don’t know what to do with her being nice to me. It makes me feel off-balance. I take the money and shove it into my back pocket, mumble something that kind of resembles Thanks, then turn and practically run out of the kitchen.

  It’s still almost an hour before I’m supposed to meet Jay Jay. I walk past his house, holding the wet cloth to my right eye and then my left.

  I think about Jay Jay’s green eye. Then his blue eye. Does he see the same through each of them? Do my brown eyes affect how I see the world? How would I even know?

  Even in the daylight, his house looks haunted. It’s huge. At least four times the size of Lila’s house or any other house around it. Dark and creepy, covered with ivy and roses, and with a thousand windows and round turrets like a castle. It looks to me like it was here first, and then the other, newer, smaller houses snuck up on it and invaded its territory.

  * * *

  I look at the window that Jay Jay said was his aunt Lucy’s bedroom and wonder which one is his. I’m tempted to knock on the door and ask if he wants to come out early, but I don’t have the nerve to risk looking so eager.

  Instead, I walk across the street to the bluff. It was nearly deserted the night before, but this morning dozens of people walk or jog or roller-skate along the sidewalk. A lot of them have dogs on leashes. I head for the wooden staircase. I’ll c
heck out the clubhouse again before Jay Jay gets there.

  Thinking about the clubhouse as I take the stairs down makes me think of the stairs leading down from the balcony outside my bedroom at Lila’s house.

  Maybe there’s a way to soundproof the vent by my bed, so I won’t have to hear them talking.

  I stop about halfway down the stairs when I hear voices. There are people in the clubhouse. I rush the rest of the way down, heart pounding.

  I have no idea what I’m going to do or say, but I’m ready for a fight. My hands are actually balled into fists.

  Jay Jay looks up at me from one of the turned-over milk crates. There are three other boys with him. A chubby kid and a skinny one who both look our age, and a little boy who is a lot younger. Maybe a first or second grader. All four of them stare at me like I’m an alien from outer space or something.

  They look perfectly comfortable. Like they belong here.

  “This is your clubhouse?” I say to Jay Jay, surprised. I shouldn’t have been. He was there last night. He told me it was a clubhouse. I don’t know why I assumed that he’d just stumbled on it, like I did.

  “It’s our clubhouse,” Skinny Kid answers. “Obviously.”

  Jay Jay stands up. “This is Tessa, guys.”

  He’s already told them about me.

  Chubby Kid stands up, and I think I’m definitely going to need names for them soon. He says, “And, for your information, you can’t just come here whenever you want.”

  “Don’t be a jerk, O.” Jay Jay looks back at me and shakes his head. Calling the other boy a jerk was mean, but Jay Jay doesn’t sound angry and the other kid doesn’t seem upset. “Don’t listen to Oscar.”

  Oscar wrinkles his nose, then sits again.

  “I’m Petey,” the skinny boy says. “This is my brother, Marvel.”

  “Your name is Marvel?” I look at the younger kid. He’s got blond hair and freckles and looks more like a Mikey or a Tommy than a Marvel. I actually can’t think of any kid outside a comic book who looks like a Marvel.

  “Don’t be rude,” Oscar says.