“Golden?” Jaimes says.
“Do you think it would be cool if I got a tattoo?” I ask loudly.
“Mom,” Jaimes hollers. “Your son’s demented!”
Mom’s sitting at the kitchen table. She doesn’t even look away from the computer. “Sure,” she mumbles.
“Sweet,” I say. “When?”
She looks up, eyes still glazed over. “What?”
“You just said I could get a tattoo,” I say.
“Actually, she agreed that you’re demented,” Jaimes says.
“Tattoo?” Mom says. “Did you know Messi has his mother’s face tattooed on his back?”
“I’m the one who told you that.”
“Well, anytime you want to get me tattooed on your body, go for it.”
“Seriously?”
“Dare you.”
“Could I get a haircut instead?” It’s getting so long I’m looking more like a dog than Messi.
Mom hesitates. Dad is the one who always cuts my hair.
“I’ll try.”
She closes the laptop and we head upstairs.
“Have Dad show you,” I tell Mom, trying to explain what the Messi cut looks like. Dad appears in the doorway and explains numbers and the blades.
“Got it,” Mom says. She turns the clippers on and jumps.
“Mom…?” I lean away from her. Dad looks from the clippers to my head.
“I can do it!” she says. The clippers buzz terrifyingly in front of my face.
“Tell me about Lucy,” she says, starting on the back of my head.
“Well… I think the Dark Lord is trying to kidnap her.…”
“It’s George.”
“He wants to take Lucy away!”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Jaimes asks, suddenly appearing in the doorway.
“Sell their house and move.”
Jaimes looks as struck as I feel saying it out loud.
Mom hesitates, and I feel something harden inside me.
“You knew.” Betrayed by my own mother. Again.
“I met the Realtor a few weeks ago,” she admits. “I was actually hoping it wouldn’t happen. She came by to suggest ways we can help the sale.”
“Like what?” Jaimes asks.
“Like cleaning up our yard, mowing, weeding, and painting. All of which I have no time for at the moment.”
“That’s why we have children,” Dad says. None of us laugh.
“I thought you were on my side.” I can’t believe she knew this and didn’t tell me.
“We’re all on the same side, Golden,” says Mom. “But the Littlehouse family moving is pretty much out of our control.”
“No it’s not. Besides, George isn’t a Littlehouse.”
“Golden.”
“What? You have to fight for the things you love.…” I realize I’ve just said the word “love” while talking about Lucy.
“You can get a tattoo of Lucy’s face so you’ll never forget what she looks like!” Jaimes says, smirking at me.
“Shut up, Jaimes.”
“Golden,” Dad says. “Don’t say thaa-aat.”
The slow slurring is new. It makes us all freeze for a moment. Even Dad.
That is, until Mom wobbles the clippers and a large piece of hair falls into my lap. I hold it up, confused.
I can tell by the way Dad and Jaimes go TOTALLY AND UTTERLY RADIO SILENT and the way Mom inhales with the clippers still buzzing above my head that something is very, very wrong. Besides all the other already totally wrong things.
I run to the mirror and scream. The front where my Messi bangs used to live? Totally gone.
I’m officially living a nightmare.
Mom and Dad are going back and forth about blade clipper size. I can barely hear them. The world shrinks, becomes black around the edges. I suddenly have tunnel vision where all I can see is a buzzed stripe down the middle of my head. Like a skunk stripe. Or like Mr. T’s Mohawk, except the exact opposite.
Was this Mom’s diabolical way of distracting me from Lucy moving?
“I’m so sorry, Golden,” Mom says. “I’ve never cut—”
“You’re not even trying!”
I end up banished in my bedroom. Alone. Again.
Totally not cool.
* * *
“Whoa, dude,” Benny says as we walk into class. “What happened?”
“Mom got ahold of the clippers.”
“Ohhhh,” he says. “It doesn’t look… that bad.”
“Lies. I’m hideous.”
Mom tried to fix my haircut by giving me a buzz cut.
We kind of made up. I felt bad that she felt bad, and that was making Dad feel bad, which doesn’t help keep him motivated.
But I look nothing like Messi anymore. I rub my practically bald head and slam my locker door shut. It will grow, it will grow, it will grow. I do ten push-ups in my head.
“Today,” Mr. Mann says a few minutes later, once class starts, “we’re going to talk about the miracle of life.”
He’s the only teacher I know who ever says things like “Class, we’re going to talk about your poop.” Which is what he said the first day of school last year, when we were studying the digestive system and nutrition. Go ahead, ask me. I’m a sinkers versus floaters expert.
“The miracle of life?” Willow asks. “With these guys?” She looks over at the boys and rolls her eyes while Mr. Mann starts the film.
“Are we going to see a baby born?” Ziggy asks. “ ’Cause I’ve seen that stuff on YouTube.”
“That’s what you watch on YouTube?” Willow asks.
“No, I mean…!” The whole class starts laughing and I join in, relieved it’s not me this time. Mr. Mann pauses the film until we are silent again.
“May we resume?”
We nod, stifling the rest of our laughs as the video starts.
The cheesy couple on the screen keep looking at each other in a way that makes me so uncomfortable I want to run far, far away. I’m glad the lights are out so no one can see my face.
The big egg and sperm come to the screen. But then twenty minutes later we’re watching the birth scene, and I want to bury my head in my arms, except I can’t stop watching in horror as a slippery baby is proudly held up. The cheesy couple beam. I pretend to scratch my ear so I can glance over at Lucy and Benny. Lucy looks enthralled, like she’s never seen anything so amazing. Benny is pretending not to look at me, too.
I wonder if my parents were that happy when I was born. There’s a lot of pictures of Mom holding me as a newborn. There’s also this picture of Dad holding me wrapped tightly in a blanket. On my head is a small knit cap, a soccer ball pattern all over it. Dad is wearing a short-sleeve shirt; his arms are strong and muscular. Mom said he held me up like Mufasa held up Simba to the lion pride, exclaiming, “Look at him—my Golden Boy!”
Judging by this video, though, they must have cleaned me up a LOT first.
Ew.
The Night I Make My Dad Fly
You don’t give up on me and I don’t give up on you.
—DAD
We spend the whole week preparing for our big matchup against Merrimack Middle School. Me and Lucy take turns leading the warm-up, and with everyone so focused on the first big game, we’re surprisingly effective.
On Thursday it’s Lucy’s and my birthday. In the morning, Roma brings me a “surprise smoothie” I pretend to drink, and then at practice everyone on the team sings “Happy Birthday.” The boys team up and shank me, and after the scrimmage Coach says, “Lucy and Golden can be our birthday MVPs.” We split the pack of gum. Cinnamon, my favorite flavor. Things must be on the upswing.
“Blueberry Island tonight?” I ask Benny. With all the Lucy moving stuff, we still haven’t gone. My birthday seems like the perfect time.
“Uh… it’s getting kind of cold. But hey—happy birthday, dude!”
He doesn’t want to go? He loves Blueberry Island. Still, he leaves me holding the ball
bag, confused, as he catches a ride with his dad, and Lucy jumps in with him. Mom and I are going to pick up Whitney and Roma from their soccer practices and then catch the second half of Jaimes’s first game.
I’m still thinking about what’s up with Benny when we get there—until I see Dad, head coach, on the sidelines. He’s not holding a clipboard or a piece of paper like he used to. He stays in one spot, his left arm hanging, hand slightly clawed. His right hand is wound around… a cane. A cane? Since when?
When Jaimes scores a goal in the last five minutes I see him smile but not clap his hands. He wears a hat, but never once does he adjust it. Who put it on his head? What if it’s too hot or itchy? And at the end of the game, when the whistle blows, the entire Mudbury High team runs to Jaimes and their goalie, jumping up and down, but Dad stands all by himself. He doesn’t even try. Not even on my birthday.
When they’re done celebrating her winning goal, Jaimes links arms with him as he congratulates the girls, then helps him walk to the van super slowly, using the cane for support. Her team watches them the way I do: like we’re witnessing something we’re afraid of seeing.
Once we make it home, I walk straight past a cake Mom actually made, go to my room, and glumly make two marks for two hours on my ten thousand hours chart. I should be happy—it’s my birthday, and I’m two hours closer to my dream. Except for the first time in my life, I don’t want time to pass by so quickly.
Ten thousand. Sometimes that number looks so impossible.
I look out the window. No sign of life next door. Did Lucy forget about our birthday potluck tradition? Is she at Benny’s house eating dinner? Having fun without me even though she hasn’t moved anywhere yet?
Ten thousand hours of Lucy and Benny friendship? That’s a number we’ve already achieved. Easily. It can’t end just because the Dark Lord says so—or because Benny won’t go swimming.
I rub my practically bald head and watch as a truck pulls into the driveway. Slick’s dad. Slick is in the passenger seat. Great.
Downstairs, Roma calls, “Golden! Look!”
“What’s going on?” I say, trudging down the stairs.
“They’re measuring, to build your dad a ramp,” Mom says. “We’ve talked about this.”
“Yeah, but… on my birthday?”
“Why does Dad need a ramp?” Roma asks, giving Mom an out from the guilty look that passes over her face.
“Better Rollerblading,” I say. “Duh.”
“Yes, that,” Mom says evenly. “But remember when we told you, honey, that Dad will eventually be in a wheelchair?”
Dad is standing by the window when she says this, and I see his left hand, holding the windowsill for support, tighten. His right hand holds the cane. My nose goes all tingly like it thinks it might need to cry. Stop! I command.
“Cool,” Jaimes says, still high from her win. “We still building a covered bridge?”
“Yeah, real cool,” I say. “Dad won’t be able to walk, but hey, we’ll have our very own covered bridge.”
My family turns to look at me.
“You’re such a jerk sometimes,” Jaimes says.
“I was kidding.…”
“Jaimes,” Mom says.
“It’s so like you,” Jaimes practically spits at me. “To make everything a joke like nothing matters. No wonder Lucy wants to move.”
“She does not!” I yell.
Instead of physically tackling my sister and being grounded for life, I stomp outside, but I see Slick’s dad holding a tape measure and a hammer. There’s something hammering on my insides, too. Why is Slick’s dad so nice and Slick such a jerk? Why did I say that about Dad? Why is my head bald? How can Lucy move? Are we still the Three Musketeers? Why is all of this happening? I’m supposed to be the captain, but I’ve never felt less in control. I hate it.
I hear a door open, but I don’t want to “talk about it” so I sneak in the back door and duck into the bathroom before anyone can see my face. Of course, as soon as I lock the door, there’s a knock.
I splash some water on my face so that it doesn’t look like I’ve been crying. Inhale one-two-three and hold and exhale one-two-three. Mom’s “warrior pose.” Shoulders back.
More persistent knocking.
“What!” I say, swinging the door open.
It’s Roma, looking small and impossibly hopeful.
“Want to play soccer?” she asks.
“Heck yeah I do.”
We play in the backyard, using Roma’s new pink f50 ball. It’s pretty sweet—even if it’s pink. After a Maradona move, I look up and spy Lucy in her bedroom window, watching.
“Lucy!” Roma yells. “Come play!”
Please.
I wave for her to come outside.
She disappears from the window, and I wilt like an underinflated soccer ball.
But a minute later her front door opens. She’s got her orange cleats on, a cool turquoise bandana on her head. We’re both red-eyed, blotchy-faced birthday babies.
We don’t have to talk about it.
I pass her the ball.
She passes it back.
And for the first time all afternoon, I smile.
* * *
We play soccer until Lucy’s mom pulls in with balloons, takeout, and another cake.
“Sorry I’m late, birthday twins!” She kisses both me and Lucy on the cheek before going into our house.
Dad comes out onto the porch, leaning on the cane.
“Birthday… dinner?”
I wipe my sweaty face, not wanting to go inside yet, not wanting to see Dad get birthday cake frosting all over himself.
“Wait. Last week you said you’d fix my bike.”
“Gold…,” he says wearily.
“It’s good practice for your hands. And it is my birthday.”
Lucy shoots me a look. It’s a low blow, but I can’t help it.
Dad gives a long exhale before stepping awkwardly down the stairs where his ramp will go. He heads toward the shed. The cane makes a strong whack on the ground with each step. I don’t look at Lucy’s face.
“It needs a new tube,” Dad says, after he’s instructed me on pumping the tire, to no avail.
“Let’s go in the truck to get one. I’ll help!”
“Golden, it’s getting late. Plus there’s dinner. Tomorrow we’ll buy a new tire tube.”
“We have to go to the lake now! Benny’s waiting,” I fib. “For a birthday swim! We never got to go this summer.”
Lucy looks at me, raising her eyebrows.
I can’t explain the urgency, but who knows if we’ll ever get the chance again?
Another exhale from Dad. “Blueberry Island is pr-pretty special. Use Jaimes’s bike?”
“The chain is off.”
“Use my bike.”
“It’s too big.”
Dad uses the cane to pull on Whitney’s bike handle.
It’s bright yellow with a retro banana seat and sparkly yellow and pink streamers that fly off the back when you’re bookin’ it down the road.
“Heck no.”
“Beggars can’t be choosers,” Dad says.
True. I jump on the bike and look at Dad. “Well? You’re coming, right?”
Dad looks at his bike and then at me. “I don’t think…”
I pat the seat behind me firmly. “Beggars can’t be choosers.”
It’s a monumental effort to even get Dad on the seat. First we have to lean the bike against the wall. Next, Lucy and I have to hold Dad and lift his right foot over the bike without him falling over. Lucy swallows hard. I want to tell her I know exactly how she feels.
Dad feels her hesitation too. “I’m okay, Lucy,” he says. “Just can’t make my…” His voice trails off as he tries to get on the seat.
“I got you,” she says, stepping forward and holding us steady. She helps Dad put his arms around my waist. His clawed left hand grasps his right one and he clenches as tight as he can.
“Okay,�
�� he says uneasily.
“Text Benny?” I ask Lucy. There’s no way he won’t go if Dad’s with me.
Lucy texts—then grabs her roller skates.
I start to pedal down the long driveway. Dad is heavy weight on the bike, and we wobble precariously. Fear grips me, knowing I can’t stop or Dad will fall off. My calves strain against the pedals as I lean forward and push harder, feeling my quads burn with exertion that feels both good and terrible. My hands grip the yellow handles.
“You can do it,” Dad says, arms around me, both of us praying they’ll stay there.
His voice helps me pedal harder until I’m at the end of the driveway, the orange glare of the sunset still bright enough to light the way down. I pray there are no cars coming because once I start I won’t be able to stop.
“Hold on, Dad!”
Lucy soars past me, straight down the hill. “Wheeeeee!” she yells, her braids flying behind her.
Dad makes a sound like he’s both terrified and excited as we start down the hill too. We go faster and faster until suddenly Dad’s hands come off my waist.
“Dad!”
My bike wobbles when I glance back, but Dad is still there. His eyes are closed. His face is turned to the last rays of sun, his arms dangling out behind him, body buoyed by the wind.
“Pedal, Golden! I’m flying!”
My face hurts from smiling so widely.
When we finally coast to the bottom of the hill, Benny’s waiting for us in his driveway.
“Nice bike!” he yells, turning out to join us.
“Banana seat!” I yell, pedaling hard to keep our momentum.
Mr. Ho is standing on the porch. Surprising me, he gives me a thumbs-up.
“Next time you’re taking me, Golden! Happy birthday!”
“Blueberry Island in the dark?” Benny says excitedly, pulling up next to me. “Wicked.”
Finally, the road evens out, and Dad collapses against my back, his left hand pinching my shirt. Light snakes through leaves, lighting our way to the beachfront.
Ten Thousand Tries Page 9