by Amber Smith
“Well, Jefferson offers the best AP classes.” She’s nodding in this way that tells me she’s expecting more of an explanation. “It’s not like I’m some genius or anything, I’m just trying to get a jump start on college. And they didn’t offer a lot of the classes at Riverside. Like AP Psych, for example.” Oh my God, I can’t stop my mouth. “That’s what I want to go to college for, at least I think I do. Or it’s on my list, anyway”—earlier versions of my list included paleontology and marine biology, and there was a time when I thought I’d be a veterinarian, a sculptor, a pilot—“so it just made sense to take AP Psych now. You know, here. Now. So . . .” I pause.
“Wow,” Dani says, shaking my hand fiercely. “So what’s wrong with you?”
I think my face must be hovering between expressions. “Oh. Right, I know. Sorry, I just—I tend to ramble when I’m nervous, I guess.”
She laughs, showing all her teeth, so loud that it echoes through the whole bathroom, bouncing off the tiles and sinks and mirrors. “No, I mean, anyone who wants to be a psych major really just wants to figure out exactly how crazy they are, right? That’s my theory, anyway. That’s what my older sister’s going to school for, and she’s basically nuts. So”—she raises one eyebrow, finally letting go of my hand—“what’s wrong with you?”
As I look at her, I feel all my dread and doubts retreating back, way back, a smile hijacking the muscles of my face. “What’s wrong with me?” I repeat, trying to come up with something witty. “Do you want that alphabetically or chronologically?” I hear myself say, an unprecedented lightness in my voice. I don’t know what’s happening to me. I don’t know who I am right now, and somehow that feels . . . terrific.
“Ha!” She raises her eyebrows. “Well, I’d actually really love to hear it chronologically, but since the bell is going to ring in, like, thirty seconds, we might need to start with the As. You may have noticed that I tend to ramble as well?”
“Then, I’m in good company.”
“I’d like to think so,” she says. “So . . . study buddies?”
I feel my head nodding up and down before I’ve even had the chance to weigh out the pros and cons. “Deal,” I tell her.
The bell rings.
“ ’Kay. Later, then.”
As she turns to leave, I want to follow behind her and ask her why she’s being so nice to me. I want to tell her I like her purple hair and ask about her eyes—did she get them from her mother, from her father? I want to stop time and savor this feeling. But she pushes through the door without another word. I check my reflection in the mirror once more—I swear I have a subtle glow to my cheeks, a gentle sheen bouncing off my loose hair. Like maybe something from Dani has rubbed off on me.
At lunch I consider going to the nurse’s office. For a moment I miss my old school—I miss the predictability of it, miss knowing my place, knowing that I can sit in the empty seat at the table in the far corner and no one will bother or question me. I can read and be left alone. I don’t have that here. But as I’m lurking outside the door of the nurse’s office, scoping out the two beds with thin foam pads covered with starchy white sheets and protective paper, and deciding on an ailment that will get me out of lunch but not send me home, I hear my name being called. When I turn around, Dani’s standing there.
“Dibs,” she says, or at least that’s what I think she says.
“What?” I ask, looking back and forth between her and the boy who’s standing next to her—he’s wearing skinny jeans, and his hair has been carefully sculpted so that it hangs down across his forehead at an angle. He’s taller than both Dani and me, and he looks like he just stepped out of a magazine shoot for something really trendy and expensive.
“We’re calling dibs on you,” she explains. “Before anyone else snatches you up.”
“Um. Dibs. Okay. Is that a good thing?” I ask.
“Hell yeah,” she says. “This is my bestie, Tyler. Tyler, say hi to Brooke,” Dani instructs, looping her arm with his.
As I open my mouth to say hello, a trio of guys runs up, tearing through the hall like a hurricane, and shoves in between us, yelling at everyone, “Are you ready? Are. You. Ready. Are you ready?” I plaster myself against the wall to avoid being trampled; meanwhile, Dani scrunches her nose up as she watches them proceed down the hall, and says simply, “Jocks.”
I guess some things stay the same at every school.
“Welcome to Jefferson Hell,” Tyler says with a polite nod of his head, barely even batting an eye at the commotion. “I think we’re in chem lab together, right?” he asks.
“Oh.” I try to recall, but my mind is still in a whirlwind. “Yeah, I think so.”
“Are you brainy? Because I suck at chem—I could use a partner who won’t let me blow myself up,” he says, completely serious, as if blowing himself up is something that happens all the time.
“Um . . . yeah, I—I guess.”
“You’re sitting at our lunch table,” Dani says. They start walking, but I can’t seem to make my feet move. I look back and forth between the two of them and the nurse’s office. “Come on,” she calls over her shoulder.
“It’s taco day,” Tyler adds with a shrug. “They’re pretty good.”
I feel something like gravity pulling me toward them.
REBELS
WHEN I GET HOME, the apartment is quiet. Callie’s not home from school yet. I drop my backpack off inside my bedroom door and go into the kitchen for something to drink. I’m surprised to see that the wooden fruit bowl that sits on the table is overflowing—an uncharacteristic cornucopia of bananas, apples, oranges, even pears. I open the fridge. It’s full of food. Mom always did the grocery shopping in small, frequent trips. Maybe spending small amounts of money at a time was easier to get past Dad, but then again, maybe she just wanted more reasons to get out of the house. I know that’s why I always wanted to go with her, despite the fact that I kind of hated going to the store—too many people to bump up against, too many unknown variables, too many things that could go wrong.
Thinking about this major grocery trip that Aaron embarked on all by himself makes me smile. Because Aaron going grocery shopping means he’s on board—really on board. It means I’m not in this alone.
I reach for the full carton of orange juice and pour myself a glass. I start walking toward the living room but stop short, remembering the rules. Dad never allowed drinks anywhere in the house except the kitchen. We used to be allowed when we were kids, until the day Aaron spilled purple grape juice on the carpet and Dad went ballistic, and Mom cried over it as she scrubbed but could never completely remove the stain. There was an immediate ban put in effect. No drinks other than water were to be allowed in any of the carpeted rooms. That was one of the rules Mom enforced—I guess maybe she did it to avoid any further occasions for Dad to lose it over grape juice stains. Or was it Callie’s grape juice? The whole memory seems to stretch out like Silly Putty, morphing in my mind, and for some reason I can’t put all the parts back together, can’t remember clearly the order of things, and that makes me feel slightly insane.
Maybe it’s that mild dose of insanity that takes hold of my limbs as I stand at the threshold between the linoleum and the carpet. Something mildly rebellious moves me forward. The juice sloshes dangerously from side to side against the edges of the glass as I tiptoe over to the couch and carefully set it down on the coffee table. I sit back and watch as the movement on the surface of it stills. I might have to work up the courage to pick it back up again to actually drink it. But, somehow, drinking it seems beside the point now. It takes my eyes a second to find that faded grape juice stain, but there it is, a small patch on the carpet, only slightly discolored, slightly darker, almost invisible. You might not even be able to see it if you didn’t know to look for it.
But that’s when my gaze catches something else—Aaron’s sneakers by the door. I’m standing before I know why. I call his name. No answer. Something about his sneakers just sitting th
ere side by side doesn’t seem right—doesn’t feel right. If he’d left, he’d be wearing them. And if he were home, he’d have put them away, because, again, we’re not allowed to leave things lying around the house, especially potentially dirty things like shoes.
I call his name again, bounding from room to room. I enter our parents’ bedroom. The bathroom. I throw open the shower curtain. Nothing. He’s not here. But then why this sinking feeling? Why this pounding in my chest, why this nervous electricity surging through my veins, keeping me searching? I’m standing in the hallway, trying to find any logical answers to these questions, trying to catch my breath, when out of the corner of my eye I see something flutter in my bedroom.
I step inside, unable to place the movement at first. Until it happens again; the curtain blows out gently, the flap of a bird wing. The window’s open. I know I didn’t leave it open. It’s not safe because this is the fire escape window—you never leave that window open when you’re not here. Aaron’s the one who told me that when I moved into his old room, after he moved out. He told me always to keep it locked, especially at night—yet here it is, not locked, not even shut, wide open.
I’m outside. Before I’ve had time to scare myself out of it, I’m scaling the rickety black and rusted metal stairs in my socks, my heart slamming against my ribs.
No.
I realize I’m whispering it, breathing it over and over. “No, no, no, no, no.” I realize then what I’m afraid of. My legs move too slow, but finally I’m scrambling over the brick ledge of the roof, my body tired and out of practice, half expecting to see Aaron passed out, barely breathing, nearly dead and shoeless.
I scan the rooftop, but he’s not there. My eyes rise to see him standing near the ledge on the far side of the building, opposite me, the expanse of stained concrete between us seeming to stretch out forever. “Aaron!” I scream, unable to control the volume of my voice, the pitch, the panic. And just as I’m about to run and scream again, Stop! Don’t jump! he turns around, a cigarette in his mouth. He seems to move in slow motion, pulling one hand from his pocket, bringing it to his lips, scissoring the cigarette between two fingers, the other hand falling from the brick ledge to his side.
“What?” he calls back, suddenly seeming not so far away after all. “What’s wrong?”
“N-nothing,” I stutter as I look around, seeing that, in fact, nothing is wrong. “My window was open” is all I can think to say.
“Oh,” he mumbles. “Sorry, I tried not to mess with any of your things. I just wanted to come up. It’s been a while.”
I nod, though he’s turned his back to me, so he can’t see that I’m nodding. I stand next to him now, my hands gripping on to the edge of the brick wall—the only thing keeping us from falling to our death. I don’t like the way he leans over it, resting his elbows there so casually; I don’t like that far-off look in his eyes. I follow his gaze, trying to see the world below the way he might see it.
There’s the wide swath of green—the park one block over, where we used to play for hours while our parents were fighting. I can’t see the swing set or the playground from here; the cover of trees is too thick. But I trust they’re still there, sunk in that urban beach of sand where we used to play pretend, making believe we were explorers or pirates, stumbling onto forgotten shores after an ill-fated night at sea had left us shipwrecked. In the distance I can see the line of skyscrapers downtown, like a fence for the city, and wonder if anyone is looking out those windows right now, in our direction, wondering about us.
“You ever come up here?” he asks as he exhales a cloud of smoke.
I wonder if he knows that I was the one who found him. I wonder if he realizes that that was the last time I was ever up here. But I only shrug and say, “Not much.”
The moment of silence between us fills up like a balloon about to burst. Some kind of urgency takes hold of me, squeezing my heart like a fist. I need for him to tell me that he’ll never try anything like that again. I need a guarantee. I need him to tell me that he’s okay now, that I don’t need to worry about him so much, and that shoes left by the door don’t automatically mean something terrible is happening.
“Are you okay?” I manage to ask.
He turns to look at me, as if he’s surprised by my question. “Yeah, I’m okay. Why?”
“I don’t know,” I lie. Then, thinking quickly, I add, “It seemed like you and Carmen might be fighting, is all.”
He smiles a little and crushes his cigarette against the strip of hardened mortar between two bricks. “She’s not exactly thrilled with our arrangement here.”
“Why?” I ask, the word coming out more defensive than I meant it to. “Doesn’t she understand that we need to stick together right now? She could even move in, too, for all I care.”
“Thanks, kiddo.” I wonder if he realizes that’s what Dad always used to call us, but I don’t point that out. “We’ll be fine. This is just our thing. I fuck up, then she gets mad, and then she forgives me. Then I fuck up again, she gets mad, forgives me—it’s the way it is.”
“So she thinks you moving back in here to help take care of us is you fucking up?”
“Maybe.” He shrugs, shaking his head. “I don’t know. I guess she thinks it’s all too much to handle—correction, too much for me to handle.”
“Is that what you think?” I ask, though I’m not sure I want to know if it is.
He opens his mouth but doesn’t answer right away, like he’s debating several different responses. “We’ll be fine,” he repeats, and it’s not clear whether he means “we” as in him and Carmen or “we” as in us.
Then he takes the pack of cigarettes from his shirt pocket and gently taps it against the palm of his hand twice; three are loosened, extending from the pack like tiny skyscrapers of varying heights. He brings the pack to his mouth and pulls one out with his lips. His hands tremble slightly as he lights it.
“I thought you quit,” I say.
“I did,” he says with a laugh, looking off into the distance again. He clears his throat—always his tell that something else is up. “Got a call from Mom’s lawyer today. No real news yet. They’re waiting for a date to be set. But he needs me to come and fill out some kinda paperwork for the guardianship thing. Not a big deal. Standard stuff, I guess. Make it official and all. I just wanted to keep you in the loop, right?”
“Yeah.” I pause, not sure what to say. “Good, I mean. Thank you.”
He nods silently and flicks his cigarette. The ashes seem to float, suspended on the air for a moment before they descend toward the ground. “Hey, new subject, okay?” he says, an uptick in his voice. “How’s the fancy-pants school?”
“It’s good, I think,” I tell him, happy for the topic change. “Or it will be, anyway. I get the impression the teachers do not mess around—I think it’s gonna be tough, but that’s the whole point. That’s what I wanted.”
“Well, you’re a masochist, so—sorry, go on.”
“It’s cleaner. Bigger. Everything’s new and shiny and high tech. Lots of screens everywhere. Smaller classes. More teachers, fewer students. They seem like mostly assholes—”
“They are everywhere, aren’t they?” he interrupts.
“Except . . . there were maybe a couple of nonassholes—one for sure.”
“A nonasshole?” he repeats, a smirk pulling up the corners of his mouth as he considers this for a moment. “That’s pretty high praise coming from you.”
“Too soon to tell, but there’s potential.”
“Potential, even,” he marvels. “Might this potential nonasshole be . . . a guy?” he asks, elbowing me in the side, with this stupid grin on his face.
I try to cover my mouth with my hand, but I can’t quite stop myself from smiling. “Shut up, it’s not even like that.”
“Oh wow—it is, isn’t it?” he teases, pulling my hand away from my face.
“No, for your information, it’s not. I’m talking nonasshole friend potentia
l—acquaintance potential, nonasshole study partner potential.”
He turns his head to the side and squints at me like he doesn’t quite believe me. I don’t quite believe myself, either.
“Not everything is about a guy, you know,” I tell him.
He nods, sticking his cigarette into a dirty pot full of old soil and ashes, whatever once lived there now long gone.
We don’t say anything else as I follow him down the fire escape and through the open window, across my bedroom and into the living room. He immediately catches sight of my orange juice glass sitting there on the coffee table. I wonder if he thinks much about that grape-juice-spill day, if he could still find that old stain. He doesn’t say anything about the orange juice I left out, though, as I bring my glass to the kitchen table.
“You know,” he says, not looking at me as he pours himself a glass of juice from the refrigerator. “It would be okay. I mean, if it’s not about a guy.”
“Yeah, I’ll keep that in mind,” I try to joke, but I’m aware that neither of us laughs.
“Good,” he says, taking a reckless sip of his own orange juice as he passes me on his way over to the couch. He sets the glass down on the end table, without a coaster, even. I join him, taking my glass back into the room with me. He turns on the TV, the volume higher than was ever allowed, and we don’t mention the fact that we’ve both suddenly become freaking rebels here.
AQUARIUM
MY FIRST WEEK AT Jefferson Hell, as the locals refer to it. The first week back home. I’m doing okay, I reassure myself. I’ve been finding my way around, keeping up with homework, and the buses have been relatively on time. I’ve even had a lunch table to sit at all week—that’s more than I can say for my old school.
We’re all doing okay. No fights. No arguments. Balanced meals and everything. I’m starting to feel things falling into place. The first step to getting our lives back on track. We just need to keep everything running smoothly a little while longer, I tell myself, until Mom can get back home.