The Rule of Threes

by Marcy Campbell

  Then he told me about narwhals, which were real, not like unicorns. A narwhal is like a unicorn of the sea. I liked that. I thought it was cool to think about this totally weird animal out there in the ocean, living its life, doing its narwhal-like things with hardly anyone ever seeing it. It seemed impossible.

  My mom wasn’t a fan of my bringing home a bunch of shells, which she said would just get broken in the suitcase and leak sand everywhere, so I only kept this one, carrying it home in the pocket of my shorts, then tucking it behind the items on my desk, where it had been ever since.

  I didn’t think the shell had any magical powers, at least not like the kind that came from a genie’s lamp, but I couldn’t deny that when I skipped over its ridges with my thumb, I felt like everything was going to be all right, and that was its own kind of magic. I rubbed it one last time before putting it back. At some point, I fell asleep and dreamed of flying pigs.

  Breakfast of Champions

  I woke up in the middle of the night, 2:35 a.m., to be exact. I’d slept in my clothes. One of my legs was bent at an odd angle, and when I stretched, it felt like I was being poked by a million little pins.

  I let my eyes adjust to the dark, then stepped into the hallway, where the little plastic nightlight cast its orange glow on the wall. I peeked into my parents’ room. They were both asleep, and close to each other, Dad’s arm thrown over Mom’s shoulders. I paused a minute to look at them. It was nice seeing them so cuddly, even if they weren’t actually aware of what they were doing.

  In the spare bedroom, Tony was asleep on his stomach, wearing a blue plaid pajama top that looked like Dad’s old one. Wrapped around the back of his neck was Mittens.

  “Psst,” I whispered. “Psst, Mittens, you traitor.”

  Had Mittens just climbed up there on her own? Or had Tony put her around his neck like I did? How would he even know to do that? As I was standing there, wondering if I should grab Mittens or not, I remembered everything Dad had told me yesterday. I remembered the DNA test and realized that if Tony was my father’s son, then he and I of course were bound to share some of the same traits. I just didn’t want to think about that. And it’s not like wearing a cat around your neck was some kind of inherited trait, like curly hair or brown eyes.

  Tony stirred, and I quickly backed away from the room. I went down to the kitchen to pour myself a huge bowl of cereal, making up for the dinner I’d missed. From behind me came Mittens’s “Meowllll.” She leapt up onto the counter.

  A few minutes later, I heard footsteps, and then Tony appeared in the doorway, rubbing his eyes. Those were definitely my dad’s old pajamas, buttoned wrong, just like my dad did sometimes. That wasn’t an inherited trait, was it? Although it was fairly dark in the kitchen, there was the glow of the clock on the stove, and the streetlights outside. It was enough light for me to notice that Tony’s nose, the dimple in his chin, his hair . . . they all belonged to my dad. Unmistakably.

  I focused intently on my cereal. What do you say to a half-brother you didn’t know you had until a few hours ago, when you meet in the dark kitchen at 3 a.m. while eating your Lucky Charms?

  Tony broke the silence. “Hey,” he said, in a voice that was softer than I expected.

  “Hey,” I answered.

  He blinked a few times. Then he reached out to pet Mittens, who was trying to figure out a way to score some milk from my bowl.

  “Your cat’s pretty cool,” he said. His voice, too, was like my dad’s, only higher and softer. “I always wanted a cat, but my mom wouldn’t get one.”

  “Why not?” I asked. “Is she allergic?”

  “No. It’s just that a cat’s one more thing to take care of, you know?”

  I nodded. My mom had said the same thing when we were deciding whether or not to take Mittens to the shelter or keep her after we found her eating out of that trash can. I wondered what Tony’s mom was like, what she looked like, whether she let Tony stay up late watching R-rated movies. I wondered what it would be like to have a mom who was sick in that kind of way. The sickest my mom ever got was when she had the flu for a week.

  The sound of my chewing echoed in my head. It sounded like I was munching on rocks instead of marshmallow moons.

  “Can I have some of that? I’m still pretty hungry,” Tony said.

  “Oh, yeah, sure,” I said. I guessed I should have offered, but you couldn’t expect much from a person at three in the morning.

  He looked around.

  “Oh, the bowls are in there.” I pointed to a cabinet. “Spoons are in the drawer by the stove.”

  “Thanks,” Tony said.

  He poured his cereal and milk, walked around the counter to where the stools were. There were three, of course, because there were three of us in this house, and four would have looked wrong, and wouldn’t have fit anyway. I’d picked them out myself when Mom said the kitchen was looking “tired.” They were steel, with a bright yellow enamel finish. Everyone loved them. Tony sat on the end, leaving an empty stool between us.

  He ate with his head nearly touching his bowl, his spoon flying, drops of milk landing on the counter. I remembered Dad saying he had showed up to school hungry and not looking great.

  Bircher Middle School, he’d said, which was on the other side of town. It was a bigger school than Long Branch, named after some dead guy whose farm used to stand in the spot where the school was built. But the name always made me think of the tree, of a birch, and that made our schools seem somehow connected—Bircher and Long Branch—though in reality, the schools weren’t connected at all. I wasn’t sure I knew anyone who went to Bircher, until now.

  Tony was slurping his milk, stained pink from the artificially colored marshmallows. It was kind of gross, so I looked away. It was so weird to know I’d had a half-brother living on the other side of town this whole time. Could we have seen each other, and not even realized it? Been in line for popcorn next to each other at the theater? Waited for the diving board at the city pool?

  He poured another bowl of Lucky Charms. Little did he know, this was a special treat. My mom usually bought Cheerios and Wheaties, which she called “The Breakfast of Champions,” and other stuff with hardly any sugar. But once in a while, she caved. Tony would find that out soon enough, maybe. We might get lucky. Maybe while Tony was here, Mom would keep the sugar flowing.

  I heard a car driving slowly down our street. It was too early for the newspaper delivery guy. I held my breath while it passed, thinking, hoping, actually, it might turn into our driveway, and someone would hop out to collect Tony, whisking him away into the night before my parents even woke up. But then I looked at Tony gulping his food and felt bad for even thinking it.

  Mittens licked my bowl. I could hear her little tongue lapping the milk. It was a comforting sound. Everything was going to be all right, I told myself. This was only temporary. Once Tony’s mom got better, he’d be on his way, and maybe we’d see each other for the holidays. I’d give him a nice sweater or a video game.

  I played with a strand of my hair. No, that scenario seemed too easy. Nothing was ever that easy. Mittens pawed my spoon aside with a loud clank, which snapped my mind back to the present.

  Oh my god! This boy is my brother! I still couldn’t believe it.

  I stood up quickly, and the metal stool teetered, but I caught it, pushed it carefully, quietly, under the counter.

  “I should get back to bed,” I said. “I’ve got a math test tomorrow.”

  “You mean today.”

  “What?”

  Tony pointed at the clock.

  “Oh, yeah, today. Well, then, I really should get back to bed.”

  “Yeah, me too,” Tony said, but he didn’t get up. Mittens had crawled into his lap, full of milk and loudly purring, and was doing the thing where she walks in a circle until she finds the perfect position to settle into.

  She rubbed against Tony’s chest, and I resisted my strong urge to snatch her away. Then Tony suddenly turned to me, and
said, “By the way, I’m Tony.”

  He stuck out his hand.

  I looked at it for a moment. Kids didn’t exactly go around shaking hands very often in middle school, even seventh graders like Tony. What do you do when a half-brother you didn’t know you had until a few hours ago offers his hand in a dark kitchen at 3:20 a.m. after you both ate two bowls of Lucky Charms?

  I reached out and shook it.

  In the morning, my mom was in the kitchen making scrambled eggs like it was any normal day, instead of the day after our world had turned completely upside down.

  “You must be starving,” she said. “I’m making you a big breakfast.”

  Dad was nowhere to be seen. Tony was asleep and snoring; I’d heard him when I walked down the hall, even though his door was closed. No one in the family snored. Guess that was another thing I’d have to get used to temporarily.

  I put my backpack by the door and sat on a stool. “I had some cereal in the middle of the night,” I said. “I guess you didn’t hear me get up.”

  “No, I didn’t. I was so exhausted last night, I wouldn’t have heard anything.”

  She put my eggs on a plate and started buttering my toast.

  “Mom, I can do that,” I said. Did she think I was a baby?

  She came and sat next to me while I ate, watching me with that look adults get when they want to make sure a kid is okay, that the kid isn’t about to break into a million pieces, but what parents don’t realize is that the look, the look itself, can make a kid feel like breaking into a million pieces.

  I couldn’t help it; I started to cry. Then I started to choke because I had eggs in my mouth.

  “Oh, honey,” my mom said, pushing a glass of milk toward me. “Honey, I cannot imagine what you’re feeling right now, how hard this is for you.”

  I drank the whole glass of milk. I thought about when I first saw Tony outside our house yesterday after school. Was it just yesterday? It seemed that time had both sped forward a hundred years and stopped entirely. My mom said she couldn’t imagine how I was feeling. Was it so hard? Confused, scared, angry—just for starters.

  “Can we talk about this?”

  I picked some more at my eggs.

  “Maggie, you can’t keep this all bottled up. We talk about things in this family. You know that.”

  It was really hard not to laugh. “Where’s Dad?” I asked.

  “He went into work. He wants to see if he can get a few days off, use some personal time, or at least get some flex hours or something.”

  “Well, don’t you think Dad should be part of our family talk?” I asked, feeling some sarcasm creep into my voice.

  I imagined Dad trying to explain this to his boss. What was he going to say? For that matter, what was I going to say to Rachel and Olive? They’d seen him, after all. They’d ask about the mysterious boy from yesterday. Should I lie? But how long could I keep that up?

  “It’s all very complicated,” Mom said, almost as if she could read my mind.

  A thin tendril of smoke curled up by the cabinets.

  “Mom, the toast is burning,” I said calmly. At that point, I didn’t care if the whole house burned down.

  “Oh my goodness.” Mom jumped up, and in the commotion, I stuffed down my last bites of egg, threw on my backpack, and headed for the door.

  “I don’t want to be late,” I said, though I was actually a few minutes early. I just had to get out of there, away from Mom’s worried looks.

  “Okay, Maggie, but I thought, if you wanted to stay home, I could call the school? Given all that’s happened in the last day, I think it’s perfectly justifiable.”

  “What’s he doing today?” I nodded toward the stairs. Seemed like he should be part of any family discussions as well. And what about Grandma? What was she going to say about all of this? We might want to call her in. At least I knew she’d always take my side.

  “Tony? He’s staying home,” Mom said. “On Monday, you two can go to school together. Today, he needs to catch up on some sleep. You have no idea what he’s been through.”

  Well, maybe I didn’t, but I really didn’t need to keep being reminded of my ignorance. “I’ve got a math test,” I said. “I need to go.” I wasn’t about to stay home all day and sit on the couch with Tony, sharing our feelings while my mom supervised, like we were on some weirdo playdate.

  As I shut the door behind me, I heard Mom say, “Okay, then, have a good day!” But her sunshiny attitude sounded really fake.

  I walked down the sidewalk. Thankfully, my tears had dried. Did Mom say we’d go to school together? I kicked a pebble across the street where the neighbor’s poodle was out front doing its business, squatting right there and pooping like it couldn’t care less whether anyone was watching. Too bad I couldn’t be so nonchalant about what people thought.

  I hadn’t even considered that Tony would be coming to my school, though I was surprised that I was already thinking of it as “mine” when I hadn’t even been there long. It was hard enough moving up to the middle school without all this mess. Now I’d be the kid with the mystery brother whose mom was on drugs. Or the kid whose dad had cheated on her mom . . . I shoved the thought away. Of course, it was a new school for Tony, too. I was sure he’d much rather be back at Bircher with his friends.

  When I arrived at to the bus stop, Olive was already there, waving at me. Rachel was still strolling up her street with a stack of books in her arms. Last week she’d decided that backpacks were kind of uncool. She waved at me, too, and soon, we were all standing there together in our usual spots waiting for the bus to turn the corner. The Santmyer brothers were a few feet away, wrestling with each other like they did every morning.

  “Get off me!” Jared yelled.

  Josh laughed and pinned his brother against the grass. Then Jared started laughing, too, and flipped Josh over and sat on his back, Josh’s whole body flattened like roadkill.

  As I watched the Josh and Jared show, the only thing going through my head was Guess what? I have a brother, too. That wasn’t something I could just announce at the bus stop, but I had to tell my BFFs! They had to know.

  Olive was scratching at something on her ankle. Rachel tapped her foot, craning her neck to look down the street for the bus. That was when I noticed her new boots. They were black suede, and I’d never seen them before. Rachel did buy a bunch of clothes before school started, but she’d shown me all of them.

  “When did you get those boots?” I asked.

  “Last night,” Rachel said, shrugging.

  “Ooooh, pretty!” Olive said, leaning down to get a closer look. “Where did you get them?”

  “The Shoe Depot.”

  “Were they expensive?” Olive asked. “They look expensive.” She was still bent over, and now she brushed her hand over Rachel’s toe. “Are they real suede? Because my mom said there’s no way she’d buy me real suede because if it gets wet even once it’s totally ruined and she’s not going to go around buying me more than one pair of boots every year and in any case, I need boots that are warm.” Olive stood up. “Are these warm?”

  “I don’t know,” Rachel said. “I guess not. Not really.”

  “I thought you had to work with Katelyn on your group project last night,” I said. Who cared what the boots were made of or what they cost?

  I watched as Rachel’s neck broke out in red splotches. The same thing happened whenever she had to stand up and give a presentation in class, or when she had to do a pull-up in gym while everyone watched. Rachel could not hide when she was embarrassed. Normally, I felt sorry for her because of that, but not today. Today I was mostly feeling sorry for myself.

  “Oh, we got done early,” she said and turned away.

  Olive looked at me and shrugged. I could feel that little burning spot in my chest. Sometimes, it felt like there was a match inside me just sitting there totally innocent, until some kind of meanness scratched against it, lighting it. And then it burned.

  We got
on the bus and went to our assigned seats, Olive with me, Rachel four rows up with a girl named Kendra. The bus was mostly full. We were the last stop before school.

  “That wasn’t very nice of Rakell,” Olive whispered.

  I shook my head. “No big deal,” I said. “Don’t worry about it.”

  I glanced over at Olive, whose lip was quivering like she was going to cry. Going to cry—on my behalf! It certainly wasn’t worth crying over, but it was still sweet of her.

  Suddenly, I wanted to tell her about Tony. She was a loyal friend. She should be the first to know. “So, hey,” I said casually, “do you remember that boy from yesterday?”

  “The boy with the basketball? Of course. What was he doing at your house? Who is he?”

  “Well, you are not going to believe this,” I said. I kept my voice low. Then I slunk down in the seat and scooched closer to Olive, not that anyone else on the bus was even listening.

  “He’s my brother.”

  “What?” Olive shouted, and now a couple kids looked over.

  “Shhh,” I said. I looked up to where Rachel was sitting. She hadn’t bothered to turn around, though she must have heard Olive shout. “Don’t tell anybody about it, okay? Though I don’t know how I’m going to keep it a secret . . . because he’s starting school at Long Branch next week. Seventh grade.”

  “Wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute.” Olive was flailing her hands around. “Back up. What are you saying? What are you even saying?”

  I took a deep breath and repeated all I knew, everything, which admittedly wasn’t much. “My dad had a kid with some other woman, before I was born, and she didn’t want my dad to have anything to do with this kid, but now she’s on drugs or something and couldn’t take care of him, so he’s supposed to live with us, temporarily.”

  “Who’s on drugs?” Olive was so wide-eyed and pale, I thought she might faint.