by Deb Caletti
My shoes are sopping, my hair is too; even my pant legs are drenched when I get home. I don't want to see Mom, or for her to see me, so I close the front door very quietly, avoid the squeaky parts of the stairs. I knock on my doorframe softly three times. I take off my clothes, which an hour ago were confident and daring but are now soaked and humiliated. I drop them on the floor in a heap, leave them there where they belong. I have a bad headache. So bad that my headache has a headache.
I put on my robe. The only item of clothing that gives you unconditional love. I have dinner with my family, do my homework. The rumble in my chest is getting worse, I am sure. It feels dark, deep. I eat about ten cough drops to keep any anxiety
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under control, and because they have medicinal purposes.
And, yes, I watch the screen, in case he appears that night. But he doesn't. He's gone.
I turn the light off in my cage. Watch the screen. There are no flickering images. Just the muddy black of darkness lying on bamboo fields.
The next day, there's excitement in the air. It is a cliche to say so, I know, but it's true. And the reason there's excitement in the air is because the homecoming dance has finally arrived. Oh, yay.
My mom is up early making breakfast for us on a school day, French toast, when we usually just have cereal. She's got the kind of looking-forward-to-it excitement that gives you culinary energy. Mom, though, doesn't eat any of it herself, she says, because she has to fit into her dress-
-like one piece of French toast is going to suddenly split her zipper. I know I'm just pissed off and am acting horrible and will probably get struck by lightning for all the awful thoughts I'm having. And I know none of the homecoming stuff is meant to hurt me--Mom's explained that she has to go as one of the dance coordinators. Still, she's obviously revved up, and her cheery anticipation makes me want to fling French-toast triangles like boomerangs.
"I'm just glad I finally found my beaded purse," Mom says, as she flips a couple more pieces of toast onto Oliver's plate. They're perfect, too. Browned, yet still fluffy. Buttery, but not heavy with grease. "In the coat closet! With Oliver's dirty cleats and soccer socks and your old school backpack piled on top. It's a metaphor for my life. Buried under everyone else's."
"I wish there was a dance every day," Oliver says, and pours more syrup on his breakfast.
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I glare at him. "Don't even joke," I say. "What?" he says.
Mom doesn't hear us. "I've got a hair appointment at one, so you'd better pick up your brother after school in case I'm late," she says.
"Cretin," I say.
"It's not my fault," Oliver says, which is true, but who cares.
Ordinarily, I might have been sick enough to stay home, but there's no way I can deal with this all day. Calculus even sounds like more fun. Dad must have felt the same way, because he'd left for work early.
"Dad took the bus so we'd have the car. In fact, if you can take Oliver this morning, too, that'd be great. I've got so much to do yet to get ready."
"Fine."
"Jade? Is there a problem?" Her spatula stops midair. "No, Mom. I said fine." "It's just your tone."
Ah, yes--the tone. The nasty traitor. My tone has gotten me into more trouble over the years than any actual behavior. And as much as I knew she'd hassle me about it, I couldn't help but let it slip.
My tone is like one of those guys who commit crimes right under a surveillance camera.
"I'm sorry," I say, not in the least sorry, or maybe just a small bit sorry. I give Milo the rest of my French toast, even though he's too fat already. "Hurry up, Oliver. If you make me late, I'm going to hurt you."
"God, I didn't do anything."
I change all the radio stations in Mom's car. We drive along the nature of jade 62
to rap music, which I actually hate. I hate it all the way to Oliver's school.
"Sis, do you ever get the feeling our parents are wacko?" Oliver asks.
"All the time, Tiger." I pull up in front of Oliver's school, past the flag whipping on the flag pole and the little kids with drooping backpacks waiting obediently at the crosswalk. I am feeling a little bad about how I treated him, though, because I really do like him. He's my brother, and we go through things together that no one else will ever understand. I have the thought that he's sure to get hit by a school bus or be killed in a school shooting now that I'd been mean to him. He'd be dead and I'd have guilt forever and never have the chance to make it up to him. "Have a good day, okay?" I say.
"It'll be a good day since it's the last one I'll have with all my limbs. The first football game is tomorrow." He scoots across the seat, opens the door.
"Oh, man. I'm sorry, Oliver."
"Not as sorry as I am."
He shuts the car door. I watch him walk toward the building. From behind, Oliver, too, is mostly all backpack. He seems too small for a big world. Which is funny, because I'm feeling too big for my small one.
"Why don't you come hang with Akello and me tonight," Michael says. "Forget all this homecoming crap."
It sounds good, but I don't like how Michael drives. And I'd never driven with Akello before, so he might be reckless. He's nice, but that doesn't necessarily tell you everything you need to know.
I could always meet them wherever they were going,
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though. "Sure," I say. "What are you guys doing?" "Movies?" "Okay."
"Should we ask Jenna?" Michael asks. Hannah's going to homecoming, with this guy named Jordan from another school, so she won't be there.
"Nah. If we ask Jenna, we'll have to watch Mary Poppins," I say. It isn't nice, but I'm not feeling nice. I have this bone-deep ticked-offness, like those days when no clothes look right and your jeans are too tight, and you feel so negative you know you're going to end up working in a 7-Eleven the rest of your life, with only an occasional robbery to look forward to for excitement. I get a 96 percent on my Faulkner paper (big deal), am asked by Ms. Deninslaw to run for an Honor Society office (so what). No way in hell I'd do it anyway, as it would mean giving a speech in front of the club, and I'd rather walk around naked in Costco during free-sample hour than give a speech. I smiled and thanked her, though, and told her I'd think it over. Just another moment brought to you by the Politeness Equals Bullshit network.
After school, I pick up Oliver, who isn't dead, and we head home. Now that he is still alive, he's annoying me again, telling me that Narnia is the name of an Italian town, that J. R. R. Tolkien criticized The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe so much that C. S. Lewis almost didn't finish it, something Oliver's told me at least three times. The house smells all perfumey when I get in, and it isn't even time for Mom to leave yet. This can only mean she is back from the hairdresser's.
Hairspray fumes. If aerosol could destroy ozone, God knows what it could do to our insides, so I hold my breath. Mom's dress hangs on the back of her door, and the sight of it, plus my extreme, bordering-on
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homicidal mood, makes me go into my room and hunt around in my box of patron saint candles.
We're not devout Catholic or anything, but I like the patron saint idea. There's a saint for everything. There are patron saints for rain (Gratus of Aosta), rats (Servatus), respiratory problems (Bernadine of Sienna), riots (Andrew Corsini), and ruptures (Florentius of Strasburg), and that's only the Rs. They've got these cool candles for each different one, a column of tall glass with a picture of the saint on the front, and a matching prayer on the back, one in English and one in Spanish. They are pretty in-depth prayers and do a way better job of kissing up to God than you could ever think up on your own. For example, a prayer to Anthony of Padua, a full-service saint who protects against shipwrecks and starvation, helps you find lost things, and protects old people, pregnant women, and fishermen, reads like this: Glorious Saint Anthony, my friend and special protector, I come to you with full confidence in my present necessity. In your overflowing generosity you hear all those umo turn to
you. Your influence before the throne of God is so effective that the Lord readily grants Jauors at your request, in spite of my unworthiness.
Or, for the Spanish among you, Santo Glorioso Anthony, mi amigo y protector especial, Vengo a usted con confianza completa en mi actual necesidad. En su generosidad . . . You get the idea.
The grammar isn't always the best, but who cares. It's like Cliffs Notes for praying. You light one up, and if anyone is listening and in need of a lot of flattery, voila.
It's tricky to choose, because I don't really have any candles for Intrusive Mothers Who Can't Live Their Own Lives. So I pick Saint Philomena, Patron Saint of Lost and Desperate 65
Causes. Anyway, her picture is one of my favorites. She seems like a really nice person.
I move a few other saints over on my dresser (saints wouldn't mind) and put Philomena front and center and light her up. Hopefully, the match won't set off the fire alarm, causing Mom to come running in with her hair just done from the hairdresser's, and her nails all long and glossy. That, I do not want.
I wave my hand around to dissipate the small poof of smoke. And then I have this realization, and that is, I just don't want to be here at all as Mom is getting ready to go. I know she has to leave early to help set up, but I still have a good hour and a half or more where she is bound to come out and want me to take her picture and admire her and be excited for the fun she's going to have at my senior-year homecoming. I know I should be a bigger person about this, but that knowing and what I feel are in enemy camps. Maybe I'm just an awful person, but I'm not in the mood to be one of the mice that helps Cinderella before the ball. Abe says I have to stop trying to please everyone, so fine.
I watch Philomena burn for a while as I figure out what I want to do. I know there's a little piece of me already working on the possibility of going back to the zoo in the hope that the red-jacket guy just missed one day and isn't really gone after all. It isn't like stalking or something if I go back again, is it? My brain starts negotiations. If I go, I can't torture myself with humiliation and embarrassment if he isn't there. If I go, I can't get all invested in the idea of seeing him. Besides, I do want to go to the zoo, just because I admire and appreciate the zoo.
Something about this still seems obsessed-fan like, so I cut
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and-paste the plan. I won't exactly go to the zoo again, I decide. I'll just take Milo for a walk.
Past the zoo entrance. Past the zoo entrance he'd have to go through, right around the time he'd have to go through it. I check the clock. I'll have to hurry if there's going to be a coincidence.
Milo is so thrilled when he sees his leash that he leaps around and starts barking, tripping over himself with excitement. It makes me feel a little guilty because, honestly, he's just being used.
His little black lips are smiling. His pudgy rear end is waddling back and forth, back and forth with joy.
I clip Milo to his leash and escape out the door. I don't even check to see how I look before I leave, so I'm really not even expecting to cross paths with the boy in the red jacket, and that way I'll hardly be disappointed when we don't. I've discovered this about things you look forward to or dread. Fate likes the surprising detour, the trick ending. When you're really excited and looking forward to something is when it turns out ho-hum or completely and devastatingly horrible. And when you think you are about to have the worst day of your life, things generally turn out okay. So I play this trick, and when I'm excited about something, I tell myself it's going to be lousy, and I think of all that might go wrong. Which is what I didn't do last time when I was going to meet the boy in the red jacket. Stupid me, I let myself get all excited, and look what happened.
Milo is walking me, instead of me walking him. For a small dog, he's really strong. Since he's a beagle, he's basically a nose on legs. Supposedly, he can pick up a jillion more scents than we can. He puts his nose to the ground and just goes. It's like he's reading a bunch of stories, following timelines in history. If you are in a car and reading a map, tracing a path with your 67
finger, you are doing exactly what Milo does with his nose--he even takes these little sudden turns and then veers back again. He stops for a while when the story gets a little longer or more interesting. Or else it's just where another dog peed.
I have to really yank on Milo's leash to get him to break focus and go where I want him to go, and then he gets settled on a new trail and I have to yank him again. Walking him is a whole lot of work, a constant battle of forcing someone to stop doing what they're really into. Like those poor mothers trying to get their kid out of the McDonald's play tubes.
We arrive at the zoo, and the same round woman with the ASK ME ABOUT BECOMING A ZOO PAL button is at the window, and she smiles at me this time. I feel kind of funny hanging around there with her watching, as if I've done something wrong already. Even though she's smiling, it's the same feeling you get in some stores when the saleswoman follows you around as if you are about to shoplift at any moment. So I decide on another plan, which is to walk Milo around the zoo's rose garden, where dogs are allowed and where there's a clear view of the zoo entrance.
I haul Milo into the garden, which turns out to be a huge mistake because there are a couple of squirrels jetting around, which drives Milo into a frenzy of pulling and barking and straining at the leash and straining at my patience. I can barely hang on to him, he is yanking so hard, and I get worried he might win the tug-of-war and break the metal clip that connects him to his leash.
Let me just tell you in case you don't know-- letting a beagle off his leash can have disastrous consequences. They are at the mercy of their nose and this screaming drive to follow the scent to wherever some animal might be. They will
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follow it into eternity or into a busy intersection or into the wilds or into the path of a truck or a ferocious dog simply because they can't help themselves. Beagles have to be protected from their own instinct. One time Milo got off his leash and flew his fat self like a speeding train through the Chens' yard, across the street, past the center fountain. Mom was chasing him in her robe.
Luckily, he got pinned in the corner of the front gate, his face bent down in captured shame. He could easily have been Squashed Milo in morning traffic.
Anyway, he is behaving atrociously. He really needs more practice getting out. It has to be right around three thirty now. It'd be just great if the boy in the red jacket came now. Milo is straining and barking and bulgy eyed and practically frothing at the mouth. He starts making that horrible heck-heck sound, that dying cough he gets when he practically strangles himself. He's so loud, Mom can probably hear him from home. I lean down and pick him up, cart his heavy, squirming self out of the garden, away from the squirrels who make that creepy semi-squeak at him as they cling vertically to the tree trunks.
Now I am sweaty and covered in dog hair and drool. Milo is not generally a drooler, but get him near an animal and he's a Saint Bernard. I set him down back near the zoo entrance. I decide to handle the whole ticket-saleslady-worry with authority. I give my face that look of determined searching, check my cell phone clock with annoyance as if I'm waiting for someone who hasn't shown, which I guess I am. Milo sits politely and stares off in the distance as if waiting for his bus, as if that crazed, frenzied fiend back there was someone he didn't know and wouldn't care to.
I look around and fold my arms, pissed at the faux friend
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who hasn't shown, but actually searching for the red-jacket boy. I'm half-hoping he really won't show, because I'm sure I smell of sour underarms and a situation out of control. Me looking like shit, and smelling bad--I am giving him his best shot to appear. Milo and I stare toward the parking lot, at an assortment of minivans with baby seats, Fords and Subarus and who knows what; I'm not so good at car identification. A big RV with a license plate that reads CAPTAIN
ED and a bumper sticker HOME OF THE BIG REDWOODS takes up two spots.
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forty-five. Three fifty. Jake Gillette shows up with his skateboard under his arm, sets it down carefully on a large, empty patch of parking spaces. He whips around with exaggerated style, showing off. I see our neighbor, Ken Nicholsen, go into Total Vid and come out a few moments later carrying a copy of Riding Giants, the big white wave on the cover obvious even from across the street. Milo starts to pant, which isn't too surprising after all the barking he'd done back at the squirrels.
Four ten.
He isn't coming.
In spite of my resolve, I feel an avalanche of disappointment. God, it's been a shitty day. And Mom is still home, no doubt, putting on her nylons and more mascara.
I decide to leave, but before I do, I notice the elephant keeper in his green shirt and pants, coming out toward the parking lot, carrying what looks to be a file box out to a truck parked in a front space. He sets the box on the hood, fishes for his keys in his pocket and unlocks the door.
He puts the box inside, then looks up suddenly and catches me staring at him for the second time in two days.
"Elephant girl," he says. His voice is deep, almost musical 70
from his accent. I smile. "He's a fat one," the keeper says, and nods his chin toward Milo. It might have been not nice, except he then pats his own stomach and smiles. "Like me. Like my wife at home. Too many treats."
Ordinarily, I'd have felt a little more wary--adult man, unknown. But I don't get any creepy vibes, and I'd seen him so many times with the elephants. He's all right, I can tell. He has smiley crinkles by his eyes, a kindly brown face, black beard and mustache turning gray. "Have to watch those treats," I say.
"Ah, such a shame," he says with a sigh. "So, you like the elephants? I've seen you come and stay."