Worth a Thousand Words

by Brigit Young

  Jake told Tillie that his parents had made a deal: since Jake’s dad had cheated, he would be the one to leave, and he would be the one to tell Jake.

  “Your mom made up the work-vacation lie to stall for him,” Tillie jumped in, putting the final pieces together.

  “Yup,” Jake said with a tight, stern mouth.

  His parents kept making plans for when Jake’s dad would tell Jake, and then his dad would put it off. Jake’s performance at home convinced his mom he was completely innocent of the situation, and so she just kept waiting for his dad to get the courage to confess. Out of anger, Jake’s mom took his dad off the family phone plan, which was why Jake couldn’t reach him.

  “That’s why he called from a blocked number. You think he blocked the number of the call from Ms. Martinez’s phone?” Tillie asked.

  Jake signaled “yes” with a single nod.

  “And when he called from Pins and Whistles you finally saw a number.”

  “I guess he had more bravery that night.” Jake continued to crack his knuckles.

  Since the family only had one car, his dad rented one for himself—a blue Chevy Malibu. He drove along Jake’s route to school a couple of times, hoping he’d get some courage. After Jake had shown up at his work with Tillie, his dad hid from him, but then jumped in the car, determined to tell him, only to lose his nerve again when he saw Jake. Just as Tillie had suspected, Jake’s dad’s coworkers knew the whole situation, and they had tried to keep Jake away until his dad could handle telling him.

  “Basically, my dad’s a huge coward.” Jake gazed out toward the street and the sky. “Why wasn’t someone just straight with me? Divorce sucks.” He put his head in his hands. “And how do I know the lies have stopped? For all I know, he was actually driving toward the school each morning to see ‘Chrissy,’ not to try and tell me. Ya know what? He’s not just a coward. He’s a jerk,” Jake said with a touch of venom, lifting his head up. He squinted in the sunlight and, without his usual wide-eyed expression, he looked much, much older.

  Tillie didn’t want to call Jake’s dad a jerk, even though Jake had admitted it already and even though she agreed with him, so she remained quiet.

  “But he’s still my dad,” Jake added, as if he’d heard her thoughts. “And my mom’s still my mom.”

  They sat in silence and watched the sights before them: the sycamore tree and the forsythia bush in the corner of the yard, the parents strolling by with their little kids, headed to the park for a sweet, sunny Saturday.

  “Why are adults so stupid?” she said finally.

  “I do not know,” he answered.

  A neighborhood cat scrambled by, and a toddler chased it, giggling, stumbling.

  “I feel like my dad has been missing for four years,” Tillie said, feeling the words rush out like a wave.

  “What do you mean? Your parents aren’t divorced,” Jake said.

  “You want to know how my leg really got messed up?” Tillie asked.

  Jake nodded.

  “I used to be able to walk perfectly,” Tillie said. “And no pain.”

  Jake leaned in toward her. “What happened?” he asked faintly.

  “My dad…” She tried to speak and had to stop and start twice before it came out. “My dad was being funny. We were in the car. I remember laughing a lot because he was so funny. He was going really fast. That’s what I was told afterward. I…” She struggled to put it all together, to really remember. “I don’t think even so fast, but still, just a little too fast for the weather, because we were late, and my parents both hated being late. They still do.”

  She no longer saw the pavement ahead of her or the jeans on her legs or Jake sitting next to her. She saw the snowy trees out the car window. “And we were going to see my grandpa. Grandpa was turning sixty or seventy-something … sixty. Yeah, sixty. And it was just one of those Illinois winter days … There was snow, it was icy, and we were just … going too fast. We were just joking and laughing and in a hurry and we didn’t slow down enough. Or not ‘we.’ Him. He didn’t slow down enough. And when we hit an ice patch we spun and spun,” she said, and just saying the word made her feel dizzy, as if she were in the car again, spinning and spinning and spinning, “and we slammed right into a tree and…”

  She saw the slice of black metal as it slammed against her torso. She heard the click her back made when it fractured, and the cry she had let out, and an old memory hit her. Her dad had cried out at exactly the same time.

  “My hip shattered. My back fractured. I broke three ribs.”

  “Oh my God,” Jake said.

  “I know, right?” Tillie shook her head, incredulous at her own story. “I broke a hip! An eight-year-old! Oh, and my pinky toe broke, too,” she added. “Can’t forget that one.”

  “Yeah, don’t leave out poor Pinky,” Jake said.

  She tilted her chin toward him, but still couldn’t look at him. “And even when the bones healed,” she continued, “somehow things never stopped … hurting.”

  “Man,” said Jake. “I’m…” And it sounded like he was going to say, “I’m sorry,” but thought better of it. “So did your dad get hurt, too? Is that why he’s … ‘missing’?”

  “No. He’s … not missing like that … Like, he’s just not there. He just couldn’t get over it…” Only as Tillie said all this out loud, finally, did she understand how true it was. “He felt really bad, my mom used to say, back when I used to ask. I guess I don’t remember him much before the accident, anyway, only in these fuzzy memories I wonder if I made up … So maybe he was always … I don’t know. He just can’t look at me. That’s what it is. He doesn’t look at me. Not for more than a second or two at a time. He feels too bad that I can’t play soccer—he loves soccer—or make friends easily, like people might think I’m freakish or not get all I have to deal with, and he feels bad because he thinks I’m weird, I guess. And since he doesn’t look, he doesn’t know I’m actually fine! He doesn’t know me at all.” Tillie looked up and met Jake’s eyes.

  “Well … That’s too bad for him, then,” Jake said.

  Her phone vibrated on the porch’s cement. They watched it light up and then stop.

  “Mom’s on her way,” she said to him.

  “So, were you mad at him? Are you?” Jake asked, his face ever-curious.

  Tillie paused. “Not mad about the accident. Just the not-getting-over-it part, I guess.”

  “Does he think you’re mad about the accident?”

  She paused again. Did he?

  “I don’t know,” she said, picturing her dad’s face in a hundred photographs. Stricken. Definitely guilty. But was he afraid she was mad? It didn’t seem possible.

  “Ya know, there’s something I never told you.” Jake interrupted her thoughts.

  Tillie looked at him.

  “About my dad leaving.”

  She nodded for him to go on.

  “A couple days before he disappeared, he and my mom got into this massive fight.” He paused, eyeing her reaction, and then went on. “I mean, they were really screaming at each other. Saying … well, really mean stuff.” He took a breath. “I should have known why he was gone.”

  “Maybe you kinda did.” Tillie shrugged.

  Tillie pictured how scary it would be if her parents screamed and didn’t just whisper harshly when they thought she wasn’t looking.

  “Ya know,” Jake said, “I’m really sad my dad lied to me. But I really don’t think my mom was very happy. I don’t think either of them were.” He sighed. “Are you mad? That I hid a big clue from you?” he asked.

  Tillie shook her head hard. “No. Definitely not.”

  “Thanks,” he said.

  They both looked out at the front yard again. A dozen birds flew through the sky and landed on a telephone line across the street.

  “Hey, Tillie?” Jake said.

  “Yeah?”

  “One more thing.”

  “Oh, no…” Tillie said, laughing a littl
e. “What is it now?”

  “No, seriously, I have to say this. Ya know how you said you thought you saw me making fun of you?” Jake bit his lip.

  “Yeah, I’m sorry, I just—”

  “The truth is,”—Jake interrupted, holding his hand up to quiet her—“maybe I did.” He looked right at Tillie, contrite. “I honestly don’t remember. And I’d like to think I didn’t, that I wouldn’t do that, but I don’t know. Last year? I was nervous, like, at all times. I did stupid stuff. I do stupid stuff.”

  “We all do stupid stuff,” she said.

  “You got that right. Well, thanks.”

  They both put their legs out straight as they sat on the front step, and leaned into each other so that they were shoulder-to-shoulder, looking out. They sat together for a while, watching the nice day roll by, until her mom pulled up to the curb. Jake stood and offered a hand to Tillie. She took it.

  “So no Lost and Found anymore?” he asked her.

  “You heard, huh?”

  “Well, I noticed you’re missing your most prized appendage,” Jake said.

  “Yeah…” She felt like she couldn’t even talk about it. “Things change, I guess. Hey, at least we’re not mad at each other anymore.”

  “Yeah.” He waved at her mom and her mom waved enthusiastically back.

  “Sorry to disappoint your mom,” he said to Tillie with a big smirk, “but I’m still not your boyfriend, so don’t get any ideas.”

  Tillie smiled, and they took a few steps toward the car. “Well, what my mom says usually goes, so … sorry. You’ll just have to accept our love.”

  “Poor Tom Wilson, then,” Jake said, chuckling.

  “What?!” Tillie stopped walking immediately.

  “Oh, come on, you know Tom Wilson is in love with you, right?”

  “Shut. Up.”

  “I’m serious!”

  “You’re so wrong. Tom Wilson is in love with Lauren Canopy. They write each other love notes!”

  “What? Are you kidding me? They’re best friends! They probably, like, took baths together as kids. Tillie, seriously? Those love notes he always asks you to look for? The notes you found so easily? They were for you! Lauren Canopy helps him write them! He hoped you would read them! Like any normal person would! Oh my God, I can’t believe you didn’t know this. And here I thought you were an observer.” Jake cracked up, mouth wide in his typical guffaw, which Tillie hadn’t seen in far too long.

  “Shut up. Shut up, shut up, shut up.” Tillie felt her face blush scarlet. “I have a limp!”

  “Oh, I didn’t realize that also meant you weren’t a girl.”

  Tillie punched his arm. “Stop. I’m leaving.”

  As she climbed into the car, she heard Jake yell, “Have a lovely day, Mrs. Green!”

  “Is everything okay?” her mom asked.

  “Yeah,” Tillie answered, turning to her. “Thanks, Mom.”

  Her mom’s chin quivered. She put her hand to Tillie’s cheek. “You got it, sweetheart,” she said, tucking a strand of Tillie’s hair behind her ear and out of her eyes.

  “He’s a nice boy,” her mom said as she drove away.

  “Yeah, Mom, I know,” she said. “But we’re just friends, okay?” Tillie smiled. “We’re friends.”

  22

  Found

  Sunday came, and something had been lifted. Maybe she was imagining it, but she could swear her foot hurt less when she put her weight on it as she stepped out of bed.

  Tillie cracked open her window. It was almost May, and the air smelled fresh. Tillie’s fingers itched to capture Sunday’s morning light, which streamed through the branches of the trees with a melancholy beauty.

  Tillie thought of her cameras, and closed her eyes, away from the window’s sunbeams. Her poor cameras. They were so beautiful, and now they were trash.

  Her bedroom door was open a crack and Tillie sensed someone there.

  “Yeah?” she said.

  Her dad knocked a little on the door even as he opened it and said, “Morning. Sorry to bother you.”

  “It’s okay,” she said, turning from the window to her dad. “I’m literally doing nothing.”

  He held something in his hand.

  “It’s been an … an odd month, huh?” he said.

  “Yeah. I guess it has,” she admitted.

  Outside, the birds’ chirping shifted from solos to chorus.

  “Your teacher from the other day? Who called?” her dad said in his mumbling, awkward way.

  “Yeah, Dad?”

  “She’s the one, huh?” he asked. “Miss M … something?”

  He wasn’t looking directly at Tillie as he spoke, but he looked toward her, toward the bed.

  Tillie nodded.

  “She described the photograph. The one for the art show?” He paused. “Is this it?” He pulled out the picture. Her dad, seemingly alone with his lunch. Tillie, reflected behind him. “I found it in the … in all the pictures that you took.”

  Tillie stared at it in his big hand. It was stacked on top of a couple of others. The glossy papers shook slightly in his grip.

  “Yeah, that’s it,” she said. “It’s really not very good, actually.”

  “Oh?” he said. He looked at it, squinting a little, as if trying to see it from her eyes. “I think it’s good. I really think you should let her put your work in. Don’t hide them from everyone, like Vivian Maier or something,” he said, in what sounded like an attempt to be funny. He paused like he was waiting for her to respond, but she didn’t, and then he went on. “She said that you turn in a lot of pictures of me. Those pictures of me that I found? Is that what they were for?” he asked.

  “Partly,” Tillie whispered. Her voice came out like she hadn’t spoken in days—foggy and slow.

  He paused and nodded. “Is the art show at school? Or…”

  “Yeah.”

  “Oh, okay,” he said. “Well, mind if I say something?”

  “Yeah, sure,” Tillie answered with apprehension.

  “I really like the photo you took of me for the art show…”

  “Yeah?” Tillie said. She felt a “but” coming.

  “But do you think Ms. Martinez might still let you do the show if you chose another one?”

  Tillie felt herself sink into the bed. She leaned back against the wall. Maybe her dad wanted her to show her pictures, but not one from her “stalker” phase.

  Her dad came farther into the room, standing right in front of her bed. “I’m sorry, but I took this from your room the other day. With the others. Maybe she’d let you use it instead,” her dad said. “I really love it.” He turned the photo toward her, and Tillie’s own face stared back. It was the self-portrait she had taken the day Ms. Martinez drove her to the doctor’s. Her mom had gotten it developed for her at Walmart a month or so ago, but Tillie had been so distracted by Jake’s dad that she hadn’t really taken it in.

  In the image, Tillie stood in front of her closet’s mirror with a camera at her chest, her face peering into its own reflection, questioning. The camera’s strap slid slightly off one shoulder. Her foot stuck out to the side. Her stance, as always, fell lopsided. Her whole self, top to bottom, was visible. She still didn’t know what story the picture told.

  “Of all your photos, I think I like it the best,” he said. “It’s perfect.”

  Her dad said this like it was nothing.

  “Dad,” Tillie said, and she could not explain why she said this in this moment, “I broke my cameras.”

  Her dad’s forehead crinkled, like a ratty old piece of balled-up paper. He glanced behind himself, past Tillie, through the walls toward where her mom was getting ready for the day, and then all around himself, like he was searching for the voice that might have said those words.

  He started to speak, stopped, started again, stopped again, and then said, “What?”

  Tillie shrugged.

  “Well, wha—” he said. “Wait, you broke it?”

  “The
m. I broke them. Plural,” she said. “The one grandpa gave me, too,” she added.

  Tillie’s dad’s face fell. Shocked, she saw that her dad appeared much more pained than he ever had standing at the kitchen window, watching the birds. He looked more upset than in any fight with her mom. He closed his eyes, and to Tillie his face didn’t seem so unknowable anymore, but simply sad, and she really didn’t think she could take it any longer, all that sadness, so she just spit out what she had realized when she was with Jake the other day. This thought that had bubbled up within her, in the midst of everyone being so mad at her.

  “I’m not mad at you, Dad. Okay?” she said, looking right into his shut eyes, right into his fallen face. “I forgive you.”

  His eyes opened. The photos visibly shook in his hand.

  “I just…” Tillie tried to continue. “So. I thought you should know.”

  Her dad looked down at his feet and said, with care, as if feeling things out, “Til, listen. I know I shouldn’t have reacted by yelling about your pictures. I know. So, thanks for … I … What’d we say when you were a little kid? I ‘accept your apology,’ okay? I mean it. And I shouldn’t have yelled.”

  His eyes darted downward, escaping her. He put a hand on his forehead.

  “No, Dad. No, just … Look at me for a second, okay?” she said. Tillie felt her hair falling into her eyes. She pushed it away, placing it behind both shoulders. She looked straight at the man before her. She was seated on the bed as he stood, reminding her of how he used to stand, a bit apart, as her mom pushed her around in the wheelchair. “Look at me, Dad.”