“How do you really feel about it?” I ask.
She smirks at me again. “I feel like I should probably get back before my father gets home,” she says. She looks over my shoulder.
“Is it far?” I ask.
“A few blocks.”
The next part comes out without a pause, which is good, because if I had stopped to think about it, I wouldn’t have said it.
“Then I’ll walk you.”
Viola shakes her head. She seems nervous. “I’m not supposed to walk home with orphan boys with crazy dads bent on taking over the world.” Her hair falls in her face again. When she brushes it away, I look into her eyes. I can feel it coming. The urge to push just a little. It would be so easy. Just once. Nothing criminal. Just make her let me walk her home. That’s all. And maybe hold my hand along the way.
But I do what I think is the right thing and look down at my new shoes instead. Viola puts a finger under my chin, tilting me back up.
“But maybe I’ll let you buy me a snow cone,” she says.
“So you used to play softball and then you got busy with other stuff,” I say as we pass yet another playground, uncracked plastic slides awash in primary colors and actual swings attached to rubberized chains. No beer-bottle flowers here.
“I do a lot of community service,” she says.
“You mean like helping people and stuff?” The way I say it makes me look like a total jerk, I know. As if I’ve never entertained the idea. Which isn’t at all true. Only an hour ago I helped a kid get a new pair of shoes.
Viola shrugs. “I like to be involved,” she says; then she points to a little shack hiding behind the playground. A large woman with a golden beehive on her head and stains under both pits sits on a stool beside two ice-shaving machines and a row of brightly colored bottles. She is wearing sunglasses. I realize I am not. I took them off back at the mall and never put them back on. I have no disguise.
The menu board only has one item listed.
“Go ahead,” I say, pointing. “Get whatever you’d like, though I hear the snow cones here are to die for.” She laughs again, and in that instant I wish I could capture her laughter and store it away somewhere. Little jars that I could keep on a shelf and open whenever.
“You first,” she says.
I order half cherry, half watermelon. She orders something called tiger’s blood mixed with suicide, and I suddenly feel boring. I pay—the whole amount this time—and point to the only empty bench, taking a seat as close as I think I can without making it obvious. She offers me a bite of tiger’s blood, and I have to admit it tastes much better than mine. We don’t say anything for a while. Just slurp syrup and crunch ice, watching the kids spiral down and crawl back up. St. Mary’s used to have a playground. It wasn’t much. Just an old wooden swing set with four seats and a tinfoil slide that burned the backs of your thighs in the summer. It was a piece of junk, but I still smile thinking about it.
“So let’s have it,” Viola says, snapping me out of my daydream.
“Have what?”
“I don’t care. Something. You know what neighborhood I live in. Know I played softball. You even know my views on matrimony. All I know about you is that you’re homeschooled and I’m the first girl you’ve ever talked to.”
“That’s not true,” I say. “You’re just the first one who ever talked back.”
She crosses her arms and waits. I try to think of something interesting I can tell her, but most of the interesting things about me I probably shouldn’t share. That I robbed a bank, twice. That I once had my eyebrows singed off by a temperamental flame thrower that my father really thought was aimed the other way. That I am, in all likelihood, the only thirteen-year-old eligible for the FBI’s most-wanted list. That my father once built a device capable of reversing the earth’s gravitational pull within a five-foot radius but accidentally crushed it when both he and it smashed into the ceiling. None of these seem like first-date material.
And this isn’t even a date. It’s a chance encounter with snow cones. Finally I think of something.
“I was raised by nuns.”
“You’re kidding, right?”
“Nope. Until I was nine years old.” She seems impressed. Or maybe just surprised. “I know. Doesn’t seem to fit, does it?”
“So you haven’t known your dad all your life? The enthusiastic one?”
“No, but I guess I lied to you the first time. I had a lot of sisters growing up. Sister Josephine. Sister Margaret. Sister Katheryn—”
“I get it. Was it like in the movies? Do they really hit you with rulers? Do they sing and dance?”
Only if you make them, I think to myself. “They don’t use rulers. They use whips. Like in the Spanish Inquisition.” She cocks another eyebrow at me, and I recant. “They’re really very sweet most of the time,” I amend.
“So you must be really religious or something.”
“Or something,” I say. I try to quickly change the subject. “What else? Let’s see. I have green eyes.”
“I can see that.”
“And I like pizza.”
She makes a sound like a buzzer in a TV game show. She has red snow-cone juice dribbling down her chin and wipes it off with the back of her hand. “Try again. Everybody likes pizza. Say you like sushi. Or haggis. Or monkey brains. Don’t say pizza. Pizza is boring.”
“Okay, I hate pizza,” I say. “I’m allergic to it, in fact. What I really like is bald-eagle-egg omelets cooked in unicorn blood.” She laughs arpeggios again.
“I’m not sure I can believe anything you say.”
“That’s because I’m a compulsive liar,” I say.
“Yeah, me too.”
“Really?”
“No. I’m lying.”
I finish off the rest of my snow cone, dislodging the little gumball that they stick at the bottom to keep it from leaking. I try to bite into it, but it’s rock solid, so I spit it out and then look down at the ground where it rolls. Abraham Lincoln looks back at me.
“Wanna see a magic trick?”
Viola turns and looks me in the eyes and I get lost there for a moment, forgetting what I just said.
“Yeah. Show me,” she says.
I nod and bend over for the coin, spinning it in my palm a little for effect. I think about my Dad’s great-grandfather sinking to the bottom of the Thames. I change my voice, make it deep and dramatic. “I will now make this penny disappear.”
She looks at me with one raised eyebrow. I mumble some magic words and then wave my arms around. She is smiling, but I watch as her eyes trace my every move, determined to catch me in the act. But it’s too late, I’ve got her. She blinks just once, and the coin is gone.
I show her my empty palms.
“Where is it?” she asks, reaching up, tucking a loose strand of hair behind her ear. “Show me your pockets.” She bends over and looks underneath the bench.
“It’s magic,” I say with still-open hands.
“I guess it is,” she says, and applauds me with three claps. Then she reaches into her front pocket for her phone, which has started to buzz excitedly.
“Dad’s home,” she says. “Wants to know where I am. I should get going.”
We walk up the block, transitioning seamlessly from one pristine neighborhood into another. Not a single broken window.
“So are you going to be a magician when you grow up?” she asks.
“I’ll probably end up in sales,” I say. “What about you?”
“I don’t know. I mean, I used to know what I wanted to be,” she says.
“And . . . ,” I press.
“I can’t tell you.”
“You can. You should,” I say.
“You’ll laugh at me.”
“I won’t. I promise.”
“You will. It’s so first grade.”
“Try me.”
Viola sighs, shoots me a warning with her eyes: if I laugh, I am a dead man. I nod my understanding. “All right. W
hen I was seven years old, my parents drove me out west on this long, boring family vacation. You know, Grand Canyon, Old Faithful, all that touristy stuff. But we stopped at this planetarium. One of the huge ones with the telescopes that can see whole galaxies and meteor showers and distant planets. Well, my father knew somebody who knew somebody, and they let us in after hours, and I got to look for as long as I wanted.”
Suddenly Viola’s face lights up as she looks at the sun-blanched sky. “I never realized how much is out there, you know? Everyone thinks of space as this cold, empty place, but it’s not. It’s filled with light, and heat, and movement. With possibility.”
Staring at her lost in the clouds, I understand. I almost reach out to grab her hand. “So you always wanted to be an astronomer,” I say.
“Anyone can be an astronomer,” she says, coming back to earth. “I wanted to go out there.”
“An astronaut,” I say, nodding. “Ah. Every first grader’s dream.”
She punches me playfully on the shoulder. I’m a little surprised by how much it hurts.
“You said you wouldn’t laugh.”
“I didn’t laugh,” I say. “I think it’s terrific, actually. It’s important to have dreams.”
Viola sighs. “I have a telescope at home, but it’s not much good in the city.” She kicks a rock, apparently the only loose rock on the entire sidewalk. It vanishes into the grass. “You can’t see them here like you can out there.”
“So what’s the coolest thing you’ve ever seen?”
“I’ve seen Neptune. And the moons of Saturn. And I got to watch the Perseid shower up close. How about you? Ever been stargazing? Ever seen anything cool?”
I try really hard not to look at her.
“I saw a comet once,” I say.
We walk a half block more and she stops, pointing to a large white house at least twice the size of mine. Sunroom. Deck. Lights up and down the driveway like a landing strip. “Nice digs,” I whisper. She points to a room on the second floor.
“My parents let me have the master bedroom because it has the biggest closet.” I start to accompany her to her door, but she stops me. “Probably best if you stay here,” she says. “If my dad sees you . . .”
I tell her no problem. I understand. Fathers can be like that sometimes.
“Maybe I’ll see you around again?” I say. “You know. Run into you. Chance occurrence or whatever.”
“Or whatever,” she says, walking backward for a bit before turning and walking up to her door.
This time I don’t wait for her to turn back around and look at me again. “Hey,” I call out. “Look in your pocket.”
“What?”
“Your back pocket. Check it.”
She pauses on her porch, then reaches in and pulls out the penny. I take a flourishing bow, the way I imagine Marvelo the Magnificent used to do the first ninety-seven times.
And then I hide behind some bushes as her father opens the door.
I get home nearly two hours later to discover Dad still shut in the basement. Beethoven is blaring, actually loud enough that I can feel it through the floor. Dad obviously can’t hear the front door close. I check the fridge to find my note is still there. He probably hasn’t even been upstairs. He gets that way sometimes: so transfixed, so submerged in what he’s doing that he forgets to eat, to sleep, so that when he finally does try to stand, the blood rushing back to his feet causes him to curse. I will have to go rescue him, pull him out, order the pizza using our fake name, the Richardsons—but first I go to my room to do a little research. Dad at least believes in the power of the internet, even if I’m not allowed to have an email account or anything; our shelves can only hold so many books, and even Dad needs to go online to catch up on the latest research in particle physics sometimes.
I glance at the headlines—the Nautilus rescues an ocean liner crippled at sea, the U.S. reengages North Korea in nuclear talks, there’s a big prison bust near Justicia—nothing I care about. I find what I’m looking for and print it out, writing down the general specifications for what I need in the margins. I hear sounds coming from the kitchen. Cupboards and can openers. The professor has emerged.
When I step into the kitchen, he is standing over the stove. That’s the first sign that something is wrong. It’s supposed to be pizza night. He’s messing with the system. A can of double noodle soup boils away in its pot. He doesn’t bother to turn around, though I know he knows I’m there.
“You’re home,” he says with his back still to me, and I can’t tell if he means it like “and thank goodness” or “where the hell were you all this time?” Judging by the sound of his voice, I’m going with the second.
“I left you a note,” I say, pointing to the fridge.
He glances at the scrap of notebook paper. Went out, it says. Be back soon. Love, Michael. In retrospect maybe I could have been more specific.
“I needed new shoes,” I add, even though that wasn’t at all my motive for going. But you have to have a reason, and I’m not sure I could explain the real one.
“It’s not a good idea,” he says. “You going out by yourself like that. Not with everything that’s happening.”
“Depends on what you mean by good,” I say, then instantly regret it. I’m sure he’s frowning over his pot at having his own words thrown back at him.
I hesitate to tell him that I wasn’t by myself. I’m not sure he would understand. In the three years that I have known him, my father has not expressed one iota of interest in women. Occasionally I will make a sidelong remark about an actress during one of our Friday-night film sessions, someone I think might be his type, Jodie Foster or a Naomi Watts, someone attractive and intellectual, and then watch his expression. Nothing. The closest he has ever come to talking to me about girls was describing asexual reproduction three days ago at the zoo. I try to imagine what an ordinary father might say. “You met a girl? What does she look like? What’s her name? Where did you meet? Is she pretty?” And I would say some cheeseball thing like, “Oh, Dad, man, she’s a knockout.” And he would cuff me in the shoulder to let me know that I had just been initiated into the world’s oldest secret society.
But my dad is extraordinary.
I look down at my printed sheet, taken minutes ago from one of those stargazer websites. It shows a panoramic view of the summer sky in the Western Hemisphere—at least what it might look like on a perfectly clear night with no skyline and a great pair of binoculars. On the back I’ve made a little drawing, a plan. It’s nothing like what he would come up with, but I’ve seen enough of his blueprints to get the basics down: where the lens might go, labels for the power source and the microprocessor, the buttons on the top, a paragraph explaining what it should do. I imagine a box that could show the stars to anyone at any time, day or night. I’m not even sure it’s possible, but if anyone can shove a planetarium into a pocket, it’s my father. And when he asks me what I want it for, I will tell him all about her. I put a hand on the paper, ready to make my request, but he speaks first, his suddenly stern voice stopping me cold.
“You broke your promise,” he says.
I take my hand off the paper and curl back up into my chair. The tone in his voice gives me a chill, and suddenly I’m spinning, trying to remember all the promises I’ve made him over the last few years, trying to figure out which one he has in mind. Did I promise him I would never meet a girl at the mall? Did I promise him I would never sneak out of the house? Did I promise him I would tell him everything, always? I don’t remember saying any of these things. For starters I never actually even thought I would meet a girl.
“I’m sorry,” I say, meaning I don’t understand, but also as a preemptive apology for whatever it is I’ve done, or whatever it is he thinks I’ve done. Dad carefully upends the pot, siphoning the soup into two bowls. Then finally he turns, and I can get a good look at him, gnawing on his lip, two steaming bowls of mostly mush in hand. He sets the bowls down and carefully settles into hi
s seat, as if he expected to sink right through it.
“You were careless, and irresponsible,” he says, as if he knows already. As if he’s been spying on me the whole day long. If this is what I get for buying a girl a snow cone, imagine how he’d react if I actually kissed one, though that thought just makes me even more jittery.
“Dad, listen,” I say. “It was no big deal. I didn’t say anything.”
Actually I said quite a bit; I don’t even remember half the nonsense that came out of my mouth. But she probably didn’t believe half of it either. How could she?
Still, he’s right. I was being careless. I couldn’t help it. It was her. She just made me feel like I had nothing to worry about.
“Didn’t say anything? You told him everything, apparently.”
Him? Obviously my dad has a very mixed-up sense of where my interests lie.
“Him?” I say out loud.
“Yes, him!” Dad says, pounding on the table, broth sloshing over the sides of his bowl. “Your friend. The porcupine. One secret. I ask you to keep one secret, for your own good, and you can’t.”
Oh.
So that’s what this is about.
“You talked to Zach?” I ask meekly.
“No,” Dad says. “I talked to Tony. Less than twenty minutes ago. Apparently your thorny little friend let slip about your talent, and now Tony has asked a favor of us.”
Of us. He means of me. I collapse into the kitchen chair, overcome by too many emotions at once. Anger at Zach for telling Tony. Anger at myself for telling Zach. Anger at Dad for insisting I keep the secret from everyone in the first place. Anger at Tony for wanting to take advantage of it. I guess the emotions are all the same; I’m just having trouble choosing a target.
“What kind of favor?”
Dad takes a deep breath, gathering what’s left of his composure. He grabs a napkin and wipes up a spot of soup that spilled. “He wants you to go with him. Tonight. To meet Mickey Maloney. They are having a discussion of sorts, and he wants you there.”
A meeting. Between the heads of the two most powerful criminal organizations in New Liberty. “And you agreed to this?”
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