by Lara Avery
He looked back at me, almost like he was remembering the same thing, but he couldn’t have been. Anyway, we looked at each other. I don’t really know what either of us was thinking, but we looked at each other for a long time.
Today, Stuart was closer to the way he was on the day he read at the library, when I realized I loved, or was starting to love, him. It’s been a while since I’ve seen him like that, actually. He’s happier when he’s doing what he wants to do, not just what he feels he needs to do. We all would be better doing that, I think.
I asked Coop for a ride home. Ever since he brought me home from Maddie’s graduation party, Mom and Dad had started to let Coop hang out and give me rides and stuff, which is nice. Takes the pressure off them to have him just across the mountain, I guess, and he’s home more often than his mother. Plus, the nurse gets expensive.
Mom invited him in to have pie, and we ended up eating it in my room because Bette was having kind of a tantrum about pie, and anyway, Coop saw the NPC Task Force pictures on my wall and asked me about them.
After I died from embarrassment and then rose again, I was like, “Oh god, that was kinda dumb. Back when I thought I could, like, make NPC disappear. When I thought I could still do all the things I had set out for myself.”
“Well, why forget about them?” Coop asked. “No time like now. They’re not going to matter less just because they aren’t part of some grand scheme. You just have to… adjust the plan.”
“Adjust the plan to what?”
“I guess I mean get rid of ‘the plan’ altogether. Do them because they’re good things to do. Do them just for the sake of doing them.”
SO I DID
Today, as a tribute to Beyoncé and independent women everywhere, I called Maddie and congratulated her again.
“Can I say something cheesy?” I asked her.
“I’m never opposed to cheese,” Maddie said solemnly, and we laughed.
“Seriously, though.”
“Seriously,” she said. “Cheese.”
“Ahem, ahem. All strong women are allies, and if I can’t run the world, you should, and you should know I’m behind you.”
Maddie was quiet for a bit. “That means a lot, Sammie. Really.”
“Well, you mean a lot to me.”
“You, too. Your opinion always means a lot to me.”
“Will I see you before you go?” I asked.
“I’m already down the coast with my aunts. But I’ll be back before school starts. We’ll see each other again soon.”
“I hope so,” I said, and when we hung up, I remembered how I had compared our debate tactics to blowing up a balloon. And maybe this is the NPC talking but something inside me had swelled up, but thankfully didn’t pop.
THE MCCOY SIBLINGS: AN UNOFFICIAL BIOGRAPHY
CHAPTER 2: BETTE
As I have hinted throughout this book, Bette Elise McCoy perhaps was not born of this earth. Let’s just say Mom and Dad “brought her back from the hospital” in late February. As a baby she was mostly quiet except when she had the thing that babies get when their stomach is always upset. To this day, she will not eat these foods: bananas, lemon or anything that has lemon in it, pineapple, Ritz crackers, oranges, mango, papaya, carrots, pasta, corn, squash, baby corn, and hot dog buns.
Bette used to have an invisible parrot that she named “Barrot.” She claims she can talk to birds of every kind. I will point out that most of this claim comes from her running at any group of birds and saying, “Fly, fly.” So, yeah, sure, the birds “listen” to her.
Anyway, Bette entered the fourth grade a whiz at math. She also, as you can see, has a strong imagination and is not afraid of what people think about her. Let’s say that for many years these two skills do not mix, and maybe Bette will not make a lot of friends. I can say that with a lot of truth because I see a lot of myself in Bette and that’s probably why I am so hard on her. I hope she doesn’t just spend all her time talking to herself, like me.
But this is my book. So I say that instead of spending her teenage years cooped up studying, Bette will make friends with someone like Maddie right away, and know that she isn’t alone, and she isn’t the only one.
Let’s say her best friend is really good at playing guitar and Bette is great at the words and the math of writing great songs (because a lot of it is math, especially for more windy-long-tons-of-sounds songs, Stuart told me that) and together they form a band called BARROT. HA-HA yes.
So BARROT gets big in the Upper Valley playing gigs and soon they go to New York City. They will blow everyone’s heads off with their crazy opera pop. They will do costumes and whole huge sets like Alice in Wonderland. They will play in Canada, they will play in Europe, they will play in Africa and India and Asia. They will make music like the two Beatles guys damn damn what are their names except they never break up.
They will live two floors from each other in an apartment building. The two friends, Bette and Whoever, will raise birds of every kind on the roof, and they will write songs and albums together for the rest of their lives.
THE MIRACLE OF SCIENCE
As a tribute to an Elizabeth Warren–esque dedication to straight-talking about my disease, I went to see Dr. Clarkington again with my parents, and asked them to put the specialist on speakerphone. I told both doctors all my symptoms, and how I was writing in this book.
“That’s great,” they said. “The book is great.”
“Do crosswords, too,” the specialist said over the phone.
Crosswords. Great.
“And her symptoms?” Mom asked.
“Things sound steady,” they said, “but not great.”
Steady, but not great.
Great.
The Linds watched the kids while Mom and Dad and I went to Molly’s afterward. They told me I could get anything I wanted. This was uncommon. Molly’s was usually reserved for birthdays, and birthdays meant pizza, because pizza was cheap. I don’t think we’ve ever been to Molly’s and ordered individual dinners.
“Are you sure?” I asked.
“Of course,” Dad said. “Hell, let’s get a bottle of wine.”
“We don’t need to do that,” Mom said, putting her hand on Dad’s.
“I want to,” Dad said, forcing a smile at both of us. “Get anything you want, Sammie-bo-bammie.”
So I was going to get the fettuccine. Mom was going to get a burger. Dad was getting salmon. It still felt wrong. Like we were celebrating something that didn’t warrant celebration.
“Why don’t we just get pizza?”
“No,” Dad said quickly. “We already chose.”
“I was just saying,” I said, shrugging. I was just trying to tell them, Hey, we don’t have to spend extra money because Sammie’s brain doesn’t work.
“If you want pizza, we’ll get pizza,” Mom offered.
“I don’t want pizza. I was just saying that we could…”
“Let’s drop it,” Dad said to me, his voice louder.
Mom turned to him, her lips tight.
“I’m tired, Gia.” He turned to me, his Irish cheeks now tinged. He paused. “I just want us all to be grateful we’re eating a nice meal.”
By “us all,” he meant me, I was pretty sure. So I thanked him. I put my hands in a prayer position. “Thank you, Father, for this nice meal.”
“Don’t give me attitude, Sammie, not after today.”
I felt my eyes narrow, automatic, my chest tight.
“What is that supposed to mean?” I asked, but I knew what it was supposed to mean.
He was going to say that he wished I would just shut up about it because they had to bust their ass every day to pay for my doctor visits, my prescriptions, my hospital stays, and he wanted me to be a grateful little golden angel child.
Well, me fucking too. I was trying to be grateful. I was tired, too. “I said we should get pizza! Did you not hear me?”
“That’s not the point—” he began, and I could tell he was
weighing his words. “I didn’t mean…”
“Dad, like, you think I want any of this either?”
“I know, but—”
“You think I even want to be in the Upper Valley right now?”
“You want to be in New York. I know.” At this point, Dad’s eyes were in his palms.
“If I had my choice, trust me, I wouldn’t be living on your dime.”
“Then go!” Dad said, waving his hand.
“Stop it, both of you,” Mom said.
“Gladly,” I said. “In fact, I think I’ll go to Canada.”
“Oh, Jesus…” Mom muttered, and flicked Dad in the shoulder.
“She’s kidding, G.”
“I’ll walk to fucking Canada,” I said, and stuck my straw through a clump of ice. “Stay with Nana. Learn how to fish.”
I sat very still, letting hot blood pump through my broken body. We were both kidding, right? But the truth behind all of it hung over the booth.
“Don’t joke about Sammie going away,” Mom said quietly. “Either of you.”
“No, of course not,” Dad started, holding out his hand. “Sweetie.”
Mom started to cry. She held on to my arm. “It wasn’t funny,” Mom whimpered.
“I know,” I said, and I took Dad’s hand.
“I’m sorry.” Dad’s lip was shaking. “It doesn’t matter.”
“I know,” I said again.
Mom’s tears unsettled a big boulder that was sitting in my stomach, and I tried not to cry, but I was leaking them at a quick rate, I couldn’t hold them in fast enough, and Dad suddenly spit out air into a sob, and we were all trying to keep it together. We were all trying not to look at the other Molly’s patrons, staring at us.
The server approached like she was walking on glass. Dad lifted his palms, imploring. “I’m a full-grown adult,” he said, shrugging, sniffling. “What can I say.”
The family next to us looked away, eyes on their food, trying to pretend like they weren’t staring.
“Whatever,” Mom said. “People can cry.”
We ordered. We didn’t get pizza.
After a while, the heaviness that had been pressing in on us was gone. Instead, the air was blank and clear. Mom and Dad dried their faces on their restaurant napkins. We ate. It was delicious.
Mom told us about one of her co-workers, a pregnant lady named Denise, who had offered to come over and show us how to raise bees.
Dad and I agreed that Davy would be an excellent beekeeper’s assistant. Bette would probably set them all free, and Harrison would get bored.
Mom asked Dad and me what we thought about her getting a tattoo, a hexagon for the six of us. I said no, Dad said yes. Mom said, too late, she already got it, but we knew she was lying because she started laughing before the end of the sentence.
Dad moved to my side of the table, so that Mom and me and him were all in a row in the booth, his stocky legs sticking out into the aisle.
Mom laid her head on my shoulder.
Dad confided to us that he would probably ask Stuart to stop feeding the chickens, since he’d always find the food piled in one place, as if Stuart had ran into the coop, tossed it, and left as quickly as possible. I laughed and told him that’d be a good idea, that Stuart probably liked the idea of feeding chickens more than actually feeding them.
Mom said she had a confession, too, that she was a little tipsy. And that her burger had made her fart.
“Gross!” Dad and I said at once.
“But it doesn’t smell!” Mom said.
“It truly is a miracle of science,” Dad said, cracking up, his face scrunched up with mirth just like Harrison’s when farts are mentioned. “That Mom’s farts don’t ever really stink.”
After our bellies stopped shaking with laughter, we sat in silence for a while.
Until I said, “Is anyone getting dessert?”
Dad replied, “I doubt they have entire gallons of chocolate milk, Sammie, if that’s what you’re asking.”
Mom and I snorted. They probably didn’t. Dad checked with the server, anyway.
We walked out of Molly’s with their arms around my shoulders, my arms around their waists. I had the urge to hang on to them, like I used to do when I was a kid, with my legs dangling as they carried me. But I got the feeling that after what we’d been through tonight, we were all feeling a little too old for that.
THE MCCOY SIBLINGS: AN UNOFFICIAL BIOGRAPHY
CHAPTER 3: DAVY
Surprise! Hahahahahaha. But seriously Davienne Marie McCoy was not a planned child, but I wasn’t a planned child, either. All the yellow and orange Bette will never eat, Davy eats it. That is to say not that she has a big stomach but also that she takes in the yellow, you know what I mean? She is happy and sunny and sweet.
Davy is the one of us who I think can be anyone. It’s like all the parts of Mom that somehow didn’t stick to the rest of us when we came out, all of those parts stuck to Davy. I was not what’s the word talking-big-but-not-lying when I said she is popular in her class. Lots of her friends come over. She gets along with adults, too. She and Father Frank are best friends. She and Dr. Clarkington are best friends.
So let’s say she is popular all the way up into high school. Let’s say that in high school she is so nice to everyone and everyone thinks she’s their best friend that she starts to wonder who is actually her friend. Like she has kind of a crisis like maybe no one knows what’s really inside her. And I can actually see Davy doing this because I don’t know where else such a good-hearted sweetie could go without people yanking her around.
Let’s say that she has a vision from God. Okay I know it’s crazy but go with me. So like a vision from God, but not God as a white man with a beard, but a force that comes to her in this yellow light and tells her that her purpose is to use her kindness to help people.
So she starts a thing where people can take classes for free if they don’t have any money. She uses all her friends around the town who are good at different things and they form sort of a school but anyone who goes doesn’t have to pay. Everyone can come and learn about stuff that will help them get a job, but no one has to owe the government money or owe the banks money.
Even when things get harder and harder for people, or for her, because it’s not going to be easy, she will be that brightness for everyone and keep them going.
And she will help all the people here that I am usually so mean about, all the people who live here for life, and those people will help each other, too, and no one will ever want to leave because people are learning and growing and being kind to each other all because of Davy.
well today is not a good day because i forgot the names of all our chickens so i feel kinda dumb stuart just left and i hope he wasn’t turned off by the way i am sort of swallowing a lot and shaking when i try to reach out for things and i tried to smile a lot and say its okay its okay and he was very nice but of course i was mad that i didn’t know any of the chickens names and he didnt know them either so its not his fault
harry and bette and davy came from the woods and davy pointed at the spotted one, the black one, the brown one, the brown and white one, and the white one and we went over and over the names again and maybe stuart got bored
i hugged him a lot before he left i hope he wasn’t scared or weirded by me he told me he didn’t want to go but i asked him to go because i was not doing great
for future reference…
THE SPOTTED ONE IS CLARKY
THE BLACK ONE IS MARGIE
THE BROWN ONE IS CELESTE
THE BROWN AND WHITE ONE IS POOPSIE
THE WHITE ONE IS MOONY
THE MCCOY SIBLINGS: AN UNOFFICIAL BIOGRAPHY [COMMENTARY BY SUBJECTS]
CHAPTER 1: HARRISON
Ya I’m probably going to be a developer.
Sammie, you also forgot the part where I’m in a helicopter and I, like, drop down on a rope and jump on buildings, and the part where I’m a sucsesful YouTube star and I make a mi
llion dollars just because I can make fart noises on my belly. Lol.
CHAPTER 2: BETTE
Hmmmmmm.
I guess, yes, I am an alien. I keep telling you guys that. Hehe.
My uncle is from Mars.
I like dogs and other animals a lot.
I am always just joking when I say I can talk to birds.
I think that sounds pretty good but I am not a very good singer!!!!!!
Thank you for writing that dear sister.
Will you please teach me how to braid later today?????
CHAPTER 3: DAVY
i like to rite on this cmpoter mom tot me how to do a face :) i dont no how to do captal letters but we are lernng how to in class sammie is the best sister
EVERY DAY THIS SUMMER HAS BEEN SUCH GOOD WEATHER, EVEN WHEN IT STORMS
I wish that Stuart didn’t have to leave on such a beautiful day. The sky was practically purple out, and the rain came down in big diamond drops.
“I kept picturing you leaving with a fat stack of papers under your arm,” I told him as we stood under my umbrella at the Dartmouth Coach stop in town. He had his windbreaker hood up, and his eyelashes sparkled with moisture.
“You’ve got a very romantic view of writers,” he said.
“I can’t help it,” I said, and lifted my chin to kiss him.
He only touched me lightly on the lips. “Are you sad?” I asked.
“I am sad,” he said, and swallowed. “I don’t like to leave you for so long.” He would be back in a few days. He was meeting with his agent and his publisher, staying in his parents’ apartment.
“I’ll be fine,” I told him.
“I know. I’m also…” he began, and sighed. “I’m nervous to meet with these people.”
“But they love you!”
“No, they don’t,” he said, and looked away.