Get Real

by Betty Hicks

  Babe? Oh, please.

  I’d love to pull out Jil’s Noxzema and loan it to him, but memories of all those years of parent lectures about not talking to strangers—especially strangers with cars—make me shut up and ignore him.

  In an artificial voice that reminds me of boots scraping on gravel, his creepy friend asks, “Who’s your hottie friend?” Is he trying to sound sexy? He’s dressed in an oversized football jersey and baggy shorts that droop almost to his ankles.

  Jil and I make eye contact that confirms total agreement: Skip Clueless. Go directly to March of the Penguins.

  They follow us anyway, but slouch-zit boy balks just inside the double doors and whines, “Ain’t no chick worth this,” and peels off to another movie.

  Baggie-shorts boy groans, but decides to follow his buddy.

  “Are we really going to watch this?” I ask Jil as we slip into our seats.

  “You got a better idea?” Jil yawns. “I’m taking a nap.”

  She passes me a sock. I pull it over my right foot, then tuck my left foot up so that I’m sitting on it. Sleep sounds like a great idea. Can I sleep like this?

  Jil’s already curled up like a cat and looking as if she may snore any second, when the movie starts. A long line of tiny black somethings inches across an endless expanse of snow and ice.

  I wish I had two socks.

  But suddenly this movie is fascinating. Even Jil sits up. We watch the most amazing footage of penguins walking, penguins sliding, penguins falling in love. The photography blows me away.

  But don’t kid yourself. You do not want to be a penguin. Penguins walk seventy miles in insanely subzero temperatures, taking awkward, ice-clutching baby steps across slippery, frozen terrain. Sometimes they fall down.

  Finally, they find this place where they mate. Eventually, each mom lays an egg, which she painstakingly passes to the father so he can hatch it while the moms walk seventy miles back to where they started. More baby steps. More falls. Just to get food to feed the soon-to-be-hatched chicks.

  Which means—you guessed it—after they load up on a fish feast, they tiptoe another seventy miles back to the baby-hatching ground. Meanwhile, all the dads huddle up to survive the wild, blowing-like-crazy snowstorms. They practically freeze their feathers off trying to keep all those life-holding eggs from icing up and cracking.

  And not a single one of them has eaten so much as a minnow for months.

  Suddenly, I feel super guilty about the piles of food I’ve devoured in the last twelve hours. If I had any popcorn left at all, I’d give it to a penguin.

  Jil and I leave the movie almost speechless.

  “Wow.”

  “Yeah.”

  We wander into the ladies room for the fifth time. Maybe the sixth. I’ve lost count, but I know I’ve drunk a lot of Dr. Pepper. I go in and out of four stalls before I find one that hasn’t run out of toilet paper. Used paper towels are spilling out of the trash cans. The air smells like you-know-what. But my tantoo is looking great.

  Back in the lobby, we sit on a bench, trying to decide what to see next. I never thought I could see too many movies, but I’m getting a surround-sound headache in my eyeballs.

  Jil elbows me in my ribs. I glance up and spot baggy-shorts boy and his zit-faced buddy purposefully slouch-walking in our direction, still showing off their cool and their car keys. Why would boys that old want to mess with thirteen-year-old girls?

  “I can’t deal with them,” I whisper.

  “Me, either.”

  “Bathroom,” we echo each other, then split for the ladies room before Creep One and Creep Two ever know what happened.

  Safely inside the restroom, we look at each other. “Now what?”

  Jil answers me by hoisting her small self up onto the sink counter and leaning against the mirror, her size-5 feet dangling.

  I moan. Then I grab a paper towel, wipe the counter clean of soap crud, and join her.

  “Jil?”

  “Yeah.”

  “How long do you think we’ll have to sit in here?”

  She shrugs. “I don’t know.”

  “Those guys are scary. What if they follow us after we leave the building?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Jil?”

  “Yeah?”

  “This is the second night in a row you’ve spent in a public bathroom.”

  “No kidding,” she answers flatly.

  For a long time, neither one of us says a word. I practice my fake piano, skillfully moving my fingers through the rotten-smelling air.

  “What’re you playing?” Jil asks.

  “‘Für Elise.’” I run my fingers in a rapid little flourish, like a wave rolling smoothly, but swiftly, onto the shore.

  “That’s really beautiful,” she says.

  “Thanks.” I play some more pretend music. Jil closes her eyes and grows silent. I wonder if she’s listening, or has fallen asleep. Fake piano can only take me so far. My body is screaming that it wants to curl up somewhere soft, but my head is so jazzed up with caffeine and sugar, I doubt I could go to sleep—even if I had a bed.

  I scrunch my butt around on the hard counter and try to get comfortable. The only thing I know for certain is that I want to go home.

  “Dez?”

  So. She’s not asleep. “Yeah?”

  “Do you think my mother would march seventy miles across an ice field to feed me?”

  I hesitate. “Which mother?”

  “Either.”

  Suddenly, I’m totally awake. My body and my head. What Jil is asking me is huge.

  “What do you think?” I ask, stalling.

  “I don’t know. That’s why I asked you.”

  I ponder it for a few seconds. Then I answer, “I think they both would.”

  “Really?” She bolts up straight, amazed. “You think Jane would do that for me?”

  I carefully consider what to say next, and also what to make of the fact that she called her “Jane.” But it’s 4:30 in the morning and I’m a homeless kid in a bathroom that needs serious cleaning, so I decide to let my opinions pour out in whatever way they come to me.

  “Jil,” I say. “I think Jane did do that.”

  “What? Are you crazy? She never—”

  “She gave you up. I bet that was a lot harder than walking seventy miles.” I look over to see how she’s reacting. She’s staring at me.

  “Jil,” I continue, “she did it to help you. So that you’d be looked after, just right. Like the penguins.”

  Jil doesn’t answer. She just has this zombielike blank stare.

  “But your real, I mean, adoptive mom and dad have done just as much. More, actually,” I add emphatically. “They’ve raised you. Every day. For thirteen years. And they’d definitely walk seventy miles to find you food. They’d walk a thousand miles. You know they would.”

  Still no answer.

  Finally, Jil says, “Jane loves Penny more than me.”

  She’s right. I know it. And she knows it, so there’s no point in covering it up with a bunch of stupid lies.

  “Yeah,” I admit. “She probably does. But you know why, don’t you?”

  “No.” Jil’s voice cracks.

  “Because she didn’t just give birth to Penny. She raised her. Because she’s been with her every day of her whole life. And I bet she’s even more protective of her than normal. You know why?”

  “Why?”

  “Because she lost you, that’s why. That makes the one-and-only daughter who lives with her even more special.”

  Jil is crying. I hear her, but I can’t look at her. I’ve seen lots of sad stuff on movie screens tonight, but I can’t make myself eyeball the real thing.

  I listen to her choke and sniff and blow her nose. I hope she found a clean paper towel.

  Finally, she says, “Do you remember the penguin whose baby died, and she was so upset she tried to steal someone else’s?”

  “Yeah.”

  “And a
ll the other penguins pitched in and fought her off and wouldn’t let her take it away?”

  “Yeah.” I’m nervous about where this is going.

  “Well, that was about a fake mom trying to steal a baby from the real mom. But what’s happening to me feels like the opposite. Jane’s the real mom who somehow lost her own baby—me. But Mom and Dad are the adoptive parents who got to keep me. It’s backward, like I’m a freak of nature or—” Jil can’t finish because she’s sobbing.

  “Whoa!” I shout. “You are not a freak of anything. That’s the stupidest thing I ever heard.”

  I slide off the counter and grab her and hug her. She is so tiny. She hugs me back, and says, “I know. You’re right. I got carried away. Me. Jil. The drama queen.” She hiccups and coughs out a nervous laugh. “I’m just so confused.”

  She slides out of my hug and slumps onto the floor. I stare at the filth she just sat down in, and I want to make her get up. But I don’t. I sit down beside her. On the grimy floor. Where wet feet have tracked over the dirt and made everything muddy. The smell down here is even worse than it was higher up.

  Neither one of us says anything for about a minute.

  “Jil?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Do you really want to know what I think?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I think there’s a difference between being a parent, and being a mom or a dad.”

  “Huh?” She looks at me. Confused, but interested.

  “Almost anybody can bring a baby into the world,” I say. “But parents do more—like miss out on a great party because they can’t find a good enough babysitter. Or they buy you your first bicycle instead of the TV they wanted for their bedroom. Parents make up stupid rules and worry about insane stuff—because they love you.”

  Jil tilts her head funny. She seems to be thinking, but her face is the color of a Red Hot.

  Is she mad at me? I know I claimed I could read her mind, but that’s just some of the time. Not all of the time.

  Why doesn’t she say something?

  Finally, meekly, she says, “Yeah. You’re right. You can be a mom—like Jane—and still not be a parent.” Suddenly, her voice is firm. “But you know what else? I think being a parent is the part that makes them real.”

  Yes! I want to cheer. Instead, I say, “Does that mean we can go home?”

  “Yeah,” says Jil. “I’d like that.”

  I grin wider than the multiplex movie screen that all those penguins just Weeble-wobbled across. “Should we call Mom to come get us, or do you want to ask zit boy for a ride?”

  Jil rolls her eyes, but she’s not annoyed. She’s happy.

  Chapter Twenty-two

  I don’t know how many germs there are on a bathroom floor, but I bet it’s a staggering number. I hope I never find out.

  Mom is going to drive over from Durham to pick us up in Greensboro—about an hour’s drive. The bad thing is that we had to spend two hours in the bathroom before we even called her. I mean, I couldn’t exactly call home at four something in the morning, could I?

  The good news is that sometime between five and seven, Creep One and Creep Two apparently gave up and went home, because we never saw them again.

  At seven A.M., I phoned Mom. I made up a lie about the piano camp teacher getting sick and calling everything off. Would she please come get us? Then I had to explain that Jil was going to cut her visit a little short, too. Mom said it all smelled fishy to her, and that she was up to her neck in alligators, but somehow, she’d rearrange her schedule and come get us anyway. Hopefully around ten o’clock.

  Like I told Jil, that’s the sort of things real parents do. So, even though Mom and I have nothing in common except blood and DNA, I’m grateful she’s going to rescue us from our homelessness.

  I’m also scared to death she and Dad will find out what we did.

  After I hang up, we take what I sincerely hope is my last cab ride for a very long time. This driver is less suspicious than the others. Apparently he knows there was an all-night movie special, because he asks questions about our major film binge, then drops us at an IHOP, where Jil and I order waffles, eggs, bacon, and hash browns. We stare at the thick mounds of food, and eat as slowly as we possibly can, trying to pass enough time until we can reasonably show up at Jane’s house. That’s where Mom insisted on picking us up.

  A person can only eat so much—or drink so many refills of water. Finally, the waitress asks us to please “vacate the table. People are waiting.” Honest—that’s the word she uses. Vacate. I think she’s trying to sound polite, even though she’s sick of bringing us water and ketchup and napkins and everything else we can think of to waste her time and ours. But we leave her a good tip to make up for it.

  Outside, we hang around a while, killing more time, but mostly wanting to throw up all the stuff we’ve eaten in the last twenty-four hours. At nine-thirty, we walk the mile to Jane’s house. The walking helps kill the feeling that I ate an elephant—with whipped cream and blueberry syrup.

  Jane is super surprised to see us, but Jil makes up a convincing story about my mom dropping us off while she’s doing some pond business in Greensboro, and that she’s going to pick us up again soon. Jil explains she wants to retrieve the rest of her stuff, but I also know she’s secretly glad we had to go back there. It gives her a chance to leave Jane on happier terms.

  They hug. They both even cry a little. Jil says she’ll visit soon, and I think she will, but all of us know it won’t be as often as before.

  Jil and I sit on the porch steps and wait for Mom. We do not want her talking to Jane. The second we see her turn the corner, still a block away, we sprint for the curb. When we fling open the car doors, she says we look like something the cat dragged in.

  So here we are, in Mom’s muddy Subaru, and you know what? It almost looks good to me—except for the crumpled take-out bag and the wadded-up Egg McMuffin wrappers that are covering the floor where my feet want to be.

  We’re cruising down the highway now. Mom asking about piano camp. Jil making up lies. Me dying to take a shower.

  Finally, Mom says, “Dez. Why is it that every time I ask you a question, Jil answers it?”

  A nervous little half laugh pops out of me. “Oh, Mom. You know Jil.”

  “I know you,” she answers suspiciously.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” I ask, totally offended. I’m a good kid! Doesn’t she know that? I don’t lie! Well, hardly ever. At least, not until lately.

  “Honestly, Dez,” she says, her shoulders sinking as she blows out a giant sigh. “Your dad and I are a little disappointed.”

  “With what?”

  “With you.”

  “Fine.” I slump down in my seat and cross my arms. Half of me is embarrassed that Jil’s in the backseat listening, but the other half is thrilled that she’s hearing the mess she got me into.

  “I mean, really. What would you think?” Mom continues. “First you want a piano. So much that you promise to babysit Denver. A day later, you don’t want a piano.”

  “I never—”

  “Let me finish. You just had to go to piano day camp—the greatest experience since sliced bread. The next day, you don’t want that, either.”

  “I told you, it got canceled.”

  Mom turns and levels a parent look at me, the one that you have to master in order to graduate from parent school—birth or adoptive. The one that says, Don’t lie to me, young lady.

  And I don’t want to lie. I hate lying. But what can I say without breaking my promise to Jil? Or telling her that I spent the night in a bathroom? So I don’t say anything.

  When Mom and I drop Jil off, she can’t even look at me. I realize that I have no clue what she’s going to tell her parents. And I don’t want to know, either. Because it’ll mean more lies for me to remember.

  A split second before she shuts the car door, she reaches into the front seat and stuffs something soft into my hand.

 
“Bye, Mrs. Carter! Thank you so much for the ride. Bye, Dez!”

  I look down in my hand. I’m holding one slightly soiled white tennis sock.

  * * *

  Five minutes later, I’m in the shower. In my own house. Yes! Letting hot water stream over every inch of me, carrying off all the germs that were multiplying like rabbits on that bathroom floor. I get barfy just thinking about it. My bar of soap is half the size I started with. If I have to, I’ll rub all my skin off, just to get rid of the bacteria. I wish I could scrub off the dishonesty.

  I think about Jil and her family, and how happy I am that she’s home. Isn’t that worth a few lies?

  I squeeze lemon-scented shampoo into my hands and breathe in deeply, flooding my nose and my whole body with the fresh, wonderful smell. Slowly, I lather it up, then massage it into my scalp with my fingertips.

  Closing my eyes, I relax and think, my parents are real, too. In every way. Biologically. Practically. Annoyingly. They’d walk seventy miles in the snow to bring me food. Just like Jil’s parents would. So why should I care if what they show up with is Cheez Whiz instead of real cheddar? Or that they won’t wash the dirty dishes?

  I admit, spending a night on the wet floor of a public bathroom has made me a little bit less critical of my house, but still …

  I rinse off the shampoo, dry off with a reasonably clean towel, and climb into bed. So what if it’s not even noon yet? Has any bed ever felt this good? I think not.

  I curl up and wonder what I’ll do all summer, now that there will be no piano. No babysitting job.

  I wish I’d asked Mr. Trimble for a list of summer book suggestions. Then I could read tales with happy endings. Stories where the well-meaning girl, the one who sacrifices everything to help her friend, gets the piano.

  In real life, I know that just doesn’t happen. Well, maybe it happens to people like Jil. But never to me. Because I know my parents. We will never own a piano.

  My birthday is in two weeks. I’ll be lucky if they give me a pencil.

  Chapter Twenty-three

  “Surprise!”

  A dozen people leap from behind doors and chairs and sofas as I stroll into my den.