Center of Gravity

by Shaunta Grimes

  “Can I come in?” Lila asks, even though she’s already standing in the doorway. And it’s really her room, anyway.

  “It’s your house.”

  She runs her hand through her hair. It falls like strands of gold silk, and I have a momentary fantasy about cutting it off while she sleeps, the way that Cathy Dollanganger’s grandmother makes her brother cut hers off in Flowers in the Attic.

  “I was really worried,” Lila says. “You can’t just take off all day and not tell me where you are. You didn’t call or check in or anything.”

  “Yeah. Well, I don’t know the number.” I walk around her, toward the door. “Where’s Dad?”

  “He went to pick up pizza.”

  I blink up at her, as stunned as if she’d slapped me. “He left?”

  “Tessa.”

  I take a breath. “Do you have a bike pump?”

  “What?”

  “Is there a bike pump I can borrow? My tire’s flat, and I need my bike tomorrow.”

  She looks back over her shoulder, like she’s wishing as hard as I am that Dad was there. “Yeah, sure. I mean. I have one. You can use it.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Look, Tessa.” She’s not giving up. “I’m sorry I yelled at you, but you scared me half to death.”

  I do not want to comfort Lila. Ever since I learned that she even existed, I’ve tried to pretend that she wasn’t real. Now I can’t have that fantasy anymore.

  I want my dad.

  I want my mom. Every time I look at Lila, I want my mom so bad it hurts.

  I wonder if the kids whose pictures are in my box feel the same way, wherever they are.

  * * *

  Dad comes home with a plain cheese pizza and makes us all sit around the kitchen table, like a normal family eating dinner. He won’t let me take my paper plate upstairs or get away with saying I’m not hungry.

  “Where’s the pepperoni?” I ask.

  “Lila doesn’t like it.”

  “I like it just fine.” Lila puts a slice on her plate. “It doesn’t like me. Gives me heartburn.”

  Gross. “Fine. But, Dad, can you please tell Lila that I’m allowed to stay out until the streetlights come on?”

  Dad takes a bite of his pizza. “That’s the rule. But this is a new city. And it’s a much bigger city than Denver.”

  “Denver’s big.”

  Dad’s eyebrows shoot up. “Lila would like you to let her know where you’re going to be. And for you to check in. I think that’s reasonable, don’t you?”

  I sit back in my chair and cross my arms over my chest. Lila sits beside my dad, too close.

  “Fine,” I finally say. “I’ll call from the community center tomorrow.”

  “I’m not sure you should go anywhere tomorrow,” he says.

  It’s been so long since he’s tried to give me any rules that it takes me a minute to realize that he’s talking about grounding me. “What?”

  And then Lila and I both say at the same time, “No!”

  We look at each other.

  Lila clears her throat and asks, “Is that where you were today?”

  “Yes.”

  “It’s at least five miles away. How did you get there?”

  “I met the boy who lives behind you.”

  Dad and Lila both give me blank looks, and I roll my eyes.

  “Jay Jay?” Lila asks.

  I’m not sure what to make of the fact that she knows him. Somehow, I thought he was just mine, even though he knew who she was, too. And his aunt is her friend. “Yes. His friend Oscar lent me a bike.”

  “Well,” Dad says, “that was nice of him. But you should have told Lila where you were going, and I still think—”

  “Jay Jay and Oscar are nice kids,” Lila says quickly. “I just need to know where you are, is all. If your dad isn’t here.”

  I take a bite of my pizza. “You’re not my—”

  “Stop.” Dad takes my plate from me, leaving me holding my slice. He gives me a look that makes me shrink back into my seat.

  “You can go tomorrow,” Lila says quietly, overriding my dad, which gives me a lot to think about.

  “And you’ll check in,” Dad prompts.

  “Fine.”

  Negotiations over, Dad gives me back my plate.

  * * *

  After dinner, I stand up and start to clear my place. Dad catches my arm, though, as I pass by him and says, “Let’s go check out your bike, Cookie.”

  For a second, it’s like old times. Like when Dad and I used to do things together while Mom was working a night shift at the VA hospital.

  Lila smiles like she’s part of it, and I steel myself for hearing Dad include her, but he just takes my plate and hands it to her, then steers me toward the front door.

  Good. For a little while, anyway, I have my dad back, and I don’t want her to take that from me. I don’t want to share.

  * * *

  The garage is packed to the ceiling with stuff. I stare down an aisle of gray metal shelves that are lined with boxes of cereal, cornbread mix, shampoo, laundry detergent. I spot at least a dozen bottles of that orange dish soap.

  “What—” I don’t even know what to say.

  “Lila likes to be prepared,” Dad says. “She cuts out coupons.”

  “Coupons?”

  He shakes his head, standing next to me and taking in the stockpiles, too. “Stay here.”

  He heads into the controlled chaos and comes back rolling my bike. He’s got a tire pump stuck under his arm and his small red toolbox balanced on the seat.

  I feel like my whole world has contracted in on itself. Like a big fist has crushed the sides of it, the way Oscar crushed his milk carton earlier.

  Dad doesn’t notice. He pops the kickstand on the bike and says, “I want to check the brakes and chain for you, too.”

  I stand and watch him tune up the bike, adjusting things here and there. He’s still dialed into the Afterschool Special where Tessa and her daddy have a very special bonding moment.

  “So what are you doing at the rec center?” he asks. “Shooting some hoops?”

  “Foosball,” I say. “We’re playing foosball.”

  “Oh yeah? You play a lot with Megan, right?” Well, I used to. I think about telling him about the tournament, but before I can, he keeps talking. “Or was that pinball?”

  “No,” I say. “It was foosball.”

  He finishes patching my front tire, puts air into it, then closes the toolbox and stands up. He looks at me and takes a breath.

  Whatever anger I have melts when he pulls me into him for a hug. I wrap my arms around him, and I’m on the verge of telling him everything about my milk-carton kids and my new maybe-maybe friends and the tournament.

  I can actually feel the relief before it even comes. It will be like popping a balloon that has inflated inside me.

  But before I can say anything, Dad kisses the side of my head and says, “I need you to cut Lila a break, okay?”

  I pull back and look up at him.

  I can’t get any words out, and Dad must take that as a good sign, because he gives me a smile like we’re in on something together, although it doesn’t quite reach his eyes.

  He ruffles my hair. “It won’t hurt to check in with her during the day, will it? I’ll be getting set up at the high school for the next couple of weeks. There’s a conference the principal wants me to go to next weekend. But I promise, things will be better after the baby is here.”

  What planet does he live on, anyway?

  As he’s lowering the door he says, “You’re all set for tomorrow.”

  He leaves me staring after him.

  * * *

  We spend an awkward evening watching E.T. on Lila’s VCR.

  “I bought it with money I got from sending in box tops,” she says, patting the machine after pushing play. “Can you believe it?”

  I can. She must have roughly a million of them. I had no idea that box tops were worth mo
ney. And I don’t care. I’m still stuck on the revelation that we both have a thing about saving garbage.

  How is it weird that I have a box of milk-carton kids, but not weird that she sends trash in the mail and gets money back?

  Dad won’t let me go to bed. He makes microwave popcorn and sits beside Lila on the sofa. She balances the bowl on her huge belly.

  I want to puke.

  At least I love E.T. It’s my favorite movie, which is probably why we’re watching it. Dad is quietly bribing me to be nice to Lila.

  The movie hits me harder than usual. I feel the little alien’s homesickness like a kick to the stomach. I want to point east, toward the Rocky Mountains, and find a way to build something out of the stuff in Lila’s garage that will let me go home.

  By the time I’m finally allowed to climb the two flights of stairs to the bedroom that is not mine, I’m exhausted. It feels like I’ve had all my muscles held tight for hours and they ache. My head hurts, throbbing like there’s a backlog of tears dammed up behind my eyes.

  I pull out my box of lost kids and sit with it in my lap, cross-legged on the bed. I take my scissors out of my ballerina box and find the milk cartons I managed to carry back from the community center. I’ve already cleaned them. I just need to finish my ritual so I can finally sleep.

  I start with Seth Delgado. He was fifteen when he went missing, three years ago. He’s not even really a kid anymore. His hair is thick and dark, his eyes wide set. Like most of the kids in my box, his picture is a school portrait. Ninth or tenth grade, I think.

  He went missing from Detroit. He is five foot ten and weighs 155 pounds. He looks athletic in the picture. Strong. If he couldn’t get away from whoever took him, what chance did any kid have?

  I’m about halfway done cutting out his picture when there’s a knock on one of the windows in my room. It startles me, but when I look up, I see Jay Jay waving at me from the balcony.

  I finish cutting out the picture, then go to open the door. “You scared me.”

  “Sorry. I saw the light come on. Finally.”

  “You were watching?”

  He makes a face and shrugs one shoulder. “Sounds creepier than it is. I think. Want to come out?”

  I look over my shoulder into the bedroom and decide that I’ll be able to leave the milk cartons for a little while.

  It’s nice out. Warmer than it would be in Denver after the sun’s gone down. It smells good, too. I can smell the salt water. Jay Jay leans against the balcony railing, his long legs out in front of him, crossed at the ankles. He came over in his bare feet, wearing shorts and a T-shirt.

  “So,” I say. “You know Lila.”

  “Kind of, I guess. Like I said, she’s friends with my aunt Lucy.”

  “Your mom’s sister?”

  He nods. “She lives in Portland now. Went there for college.”

  “My dad just married Lila.” I wince. He already knows that.

  We just stand there for a few minutes. He finally says, “Your parents are divorced?”

  I shake my head and take a breath. I always have to steel myself before I say this out loud. “My mom died last year.”

  “Oh.” He gives me the look. Pity, mixed with a little dose of I’m glad it’s not me. And something I haven’t seen yet, but I’m sure I will again: he’s embarrassed for me because my dad has married such a young woman so soon after my mom’s death. I know what’s coming next. It always comes. “I’m sorry.”

  Like it was his fault. Why do I have to forgive everyone else when it’s my mom who died? “It’s okay.”

  “Must be hard, though,” he says. “I barely see my mom, and I can’t imagine if she died.”

  I sit on the ground with my back to the wall, facing Jay Jay, and hug my knees. “How come you don’t see her?”

  He sits, too, with his back against the balcony wall. “My grandma says she’s a wild child. She had me when she was in the tenth grade.”

  My parents were twenty-eight when I was born. His mom was only three years older than I am now when he was born. “Wow.”

  He shrugs. “She tried. For a while.”

  “Where is she now?”

  “Last I heard, she was in Las Vegas. My grandma doesn’t think she’s with my dad anymore. She says drugs matter more to both of them than anything or anyone else.”

  The nicest thing I can do, I decide, is change the subject. “So why do you guys need to win the foosball tournament so bad?”

  “It’s a thousand bucks.”

  So they keep telling me. That’s a lot of money. But Jay Jay lives in a mansion. His grandma has a maid. “It’s just the money?”

  It’s not. I can see it in his face, even in the dark. He’s looking at me with his different-colored eyes, like he’s trying to decide whether or not he can trust me. I try to look like someone who can keep a secret.

  If he tells me, it will mean that we really are friends. Not just maybe-maybe.

  “You know those kids you collect?” he asks. “You think they have families who are looking for them?”

  “Yeah, of course.”

  “Good families?”

  I look harder at him, trying to figure out what he’s getting at. “I mean, probably.”

  “Some kids…” He drums his fingers against his knees. “I mean, sometimes, it’s better not to be found.”

  “How is it better?”

  “I mean, not every kid was kidnapped or something. Right? Some of them, maybe…”

  “Ran away?”

  He shakes his head. “Escaped.”

  “Escaped … what are you talking about?”

  “We really need you to help us win that tournament, okay? If you play with us, I think we have a chance.” He leans his head back against the wall. “I didn’t think we did before.”

  “Then why were you doing it?”

  He looks at me again. “We have to do something.”

  “You’re so confusing.”

  “Just—you’re going to be there tomorrow, right? We’re meeting at the clubhouse at nine.”

  “Don’t you guys ever sleep in? It’s summer.”

  “So you’ll be there?”

  “Yeah,” I say. “But I still don’t understand—”

  He stands up and shoves his hands in his pockets. “We better get some sleep then. Night.”

  And just like that, my maybe friend is gone.

  * * *

  I’m exhausted. Not because it’s late, but because I feel empty. Like someone has stuck a huge straw in me and sucked me dry.

  But I have a ritual, and just like I can’t leave a milk cooler without a new kid or turning over every carton, I can’t skip this.

  I trim the other two kids I collected today. I pull out my entire stack of cards—fifty-five now, which is a very satisfying number—and set them on the bed, leaning against my thigh. I take the top card from the pile and look at Christine Adams.

  I whisper her stats out loud.

  Four years old when she was taken from Topeka, Kansas, in 1978. Blond. Green eyes. Thirty-eight inches tall and forty-three pounds. She’s eleven now.

  After I’ve said every single thing I know about her out loud, I spend ten seconds staring at her picture, focusing as hard as I can on her face. I try to burn into my memory the shape of her eyes, the width of her nose, the way her chin has a small dip in the center.

  I’ve done this so many times that I’ve developed a kind of inner timer. When the ten seconds is up, I put her card in the box and move on to the next.

  Each card gets the same ten seconds. I have this ritual down to a science.

  EIGHT

  The next morning, I take a shower in the bathroom on the second floor.

  It’s filled with Dad’s familiar things—the same shampoo he’s always used. The old-fashioned shaving soap mug with a brush he swirls around in it, and then over his cheeks. His bathrobe hangs on the back of the door.

  And it’s filled with Lila’s things, too. Her
bathrobe, silky pink with flowers, hangs next to Dad’s. Shampoo that smells like coconuts. Lotions and makeup that I’ve never seen before. Her crimping iron is on the sink.

  It’s like being half in the real world and half in some alternate universe where Mom’s stuff—which Dad only put away a few months ago—has been replaced.

  Once I’m in the shower I have a choice between Dad’s shampoo and Lila’s. His smells like Old Spice, but I use it anyway.

  * * *

  “Good morning,” Lila says when I come downstairs wearing a pair of cutoff jeans and a Broncos T-shirt. I have my damp hair in a braid and my backpack hooked over one shoulder. It’s empty except for a sweatshirt in the bottom to cushion whatever milk cartons I find myself bringing home today.

  I make myself a bowl of Cheerios, because they’re already sitting on the table. There’s a half-gallon carton of milk there, too, and I try to be casual when I turn it around. I see two girls I don’t have. Laurel and Becca. The carton’s still half full of milk.

  “Is it okay if I have a glass of milk?”

  “You don’t have to ask,” she says.

  “Oh.” I hesitate for a minute, because I’m not sure where the glasses are.

  Lila opens a cupboard and hands me a little jelly jar with Mickey Mouse on it. She holds it in front of her face and says “Good morning, Tessa Hart” in a squeaky Mickey Mouse voice.

  She’s trying. I can see that, but I don’t want to.

  I have Dad in my head, too, asking me to help make it easier for her to deal with me.

  “Did Dad already go to school?” I ask.

  She hands me the glass. “He’s getting his classroom set up.”

  “He said I could go back to the community center today. He said it was okay.”

  “I know.” Lila smiles at me, but her face looks pinched. Like maybe she doesn’t feel well.

  “So it’s okay?”

  “Just call at lunchtime, okay?” She reaches into her pocket and pulls out a slip of paper she’s written a phone number on. “Please, Tessa.”

  “I will.” I want to leave now. Get my bike and go until the streetlights are on and Dad is back. But she really does look a little green. “Are you okay?”