by Crystal Chan
John jabbed his chicken and stuck a chunk in his mouth. “We went tree climbing,” he said.
“Oh, really?” But her words were measured. She doesn’t like it when I climb trees.
“Yup,” John said.
Dad was talking to Grandpa in his room. In low tones. Strained.
“Jewel, you shouldn’t make John climb your trees with you,” she said, trying to talk with a happy tone to her voice.
“She didn’t make me,” John said. “Not at all. In fact, I was the one who suggested it.”
“Oh?”
“Yup. Trees are the perfect places to conduct tests on gravity,” John said. “When you sit on the lowest branches, of course.”
“I see.” I could tell Mom was having a hard time deciding if she should believe him.
John’s eyes landed on the red sweater that Grandpa had nailed to our dining room wall, right below the horseshoe. “Hey,” he said. “Why is—”
The door to Grandpa’s room clicked open. Only Dad came out, his bare feet heavy on our floor. He looked more tired than usual.
Mom turned to him. “Nigel, this is Jewel’s friend that I was talking to you about.”
Dad’s eyes scanned John from head to toe, lingering on John’s dark skin, then his cheek. He walked to where John was sitting. “Good to meet you,” he said. “I’m Mr. Campbell.” He put his hand on John’s shoulder.
“I’m John,” he said.
Dad’s eyes widened. “John?”
That one lonely word hung in the air. Dad shot a look at Mom, as if to say, Why didn’t you tell me? Then he peered back at John, his eyes squinty and piercing, almost as if he were trying to lift off John’s skin, dig around, and maybe find Bird.
John squirmed.
“Nigel—” Mom said.
“Well,” Dad said quickly, his voice unsteady, “we’re glad you came over.” He sat down and scooped a heap of rice onto his plate. He took only the gravy, not the chicken. None of us looked at the chair where Grandpa usually sits. “How do you like Iowa?” Dad asked, his eyes still lingering on John’s face.
“It’s a different planet,” John replied, his eyes wide. A small smile crept onto Dad’s lips.
Suddenly a sharp breaking sound came from Grandpa’s room. Like the breaking of glass.
There was a long, awful pause. I looked down at my plate.
“Is everything okay?” John asked. His eyebrows were knitted up in concern. Or maybe confusion.
“Grandpa’s fine,” Dad said.
I took another piece of chicken even though I wasn’t hungry.
“You know, we used to have a son named John,” Dad said suddenly.
“Really?” John said, all polite.
Mom shot Dad a look.
“Yes,” Dad continued. “I gave him that name. John.”
“Nigel, stop,” Mom said quietly.
I glanced at Mom. Her face was tense. Just looking at her made me all tense too.
A series of thumping sounds came from Grandpa’s room.
“How many signs do you need, Rose?” Dad asked Mom. “What are the chances that John”—he paused to emphasize John’s name—“could come here and be friends with Jewel?”
“Nigel, don’t sound like a lunatic. The chances are pretty good, actually,” Mom said. But the strange look on her face scared me.
“Would you like some more chicken?” I asked John. “Or water?”
Mom was still turned to Dad. “Just let Jewel and John enjoy their dinner.”
I stood up. “I’ll get some water,” I announced. “Does anyone want ice?”
“I’ll have ice,” John said. I wasn’t sure if he wanted ice for his water or his cheek.
The pounding continued to come from down the bedroom hallway.
“You are refusing to see reality, Rose,” Dad insisted, his voice tightening up. “Just let me teach her so she knows about these things.”
My stomach lurched. “Actually, it’s okay,” I said to no one in particular. Why was Dad pressing on like this?
John’s head bounced back and forth among us like a crowd at a tennis match.
“Jewel needs to know about the spirit world,” Dad said flatly. “Jewel meeting John can’t be a coincidence. At the very least, it’s bad lu—”
Mom stood up and slammed her hand down on the table, and the table jumped with the force of her palm. Silence hung wetly in the air. We stared at her.
Only Grandpa’s pounding could be heard.
“Sit down, Jewel,” she said. Her voice was quiet. “I’ll get the water.”
I hadn’t realized I was still standing. I sat down, feeling nauseous.
We were silent after that. The three of us listened to Mom lift the kitchen faucet handle, listened to all the built-up pressure that was forcing the water out and into our glasses. She came back and calmly placed our glasses in front of us.
John put his ice pack to his cheek. “This chicken is just great, Rose,” he said.
Dad’s eyebrows shot up when John called Mom “Rose.”
John gnawed on his last chunk of chicken and washed it down with his water. “It would be terrific on the grill, too.”
“Do you think so?” But her voice was still strained.
“Yup. With charcoal,” John said, throwing a grin at me.
I burst out laughing. “With lots of charcoal!” I cried.
I had a laugh attack right there in front of my parents. I don’t know what got into me at that moment, but whatever it was, it came out, and it came out loud and fearsome and free. And I guess it was contagious, because John, after his initial surprise, started up too, until we were a fierce duo of openmouthed, stomach-gripping laughter.
Mom and Dad looked at each other, confused at us. At me.
And to tell the truth, I didn’t care.
John and I were useless after that. Tears streamed down both our faces, and we gasped for air so bad that Dad and Mom sent us outside while they cleaned up. I couldn’t remember the last time I didn’t pick up after dinner, but there we were, running through my sloping backyard with our shoes in our hands, well past Dad’s garden, the grass soft and warm beneath our feet.
“Did you see the looks on their faces?” John howled.
“You’re terrible,” I said, my throat hoarse from laughing so hard. “Charcoal!”
John bent down, ripped grass with his hand, and threw it at me. I managed to stuff some down his shirt, and we had a grass war until we were good and sweaty, until the grass stuck to our skin and our faces and our hair, until the stars slowly winked to life in the dark half of the sky.
“What was that all about?” John asked after a while.
“I have no idea.” A strange feeling clung to the inside of my skin. “They never argue like that, not about Bird.”
“Look,” he said, spreading his arms out, “I can’t help my name is John.”
“I know, but—”
“But what?”
I looked at him. “What are the chances that we’d meet and be friends?”
“John is a pretty common name,” John pointed out.
“But still,” I insisted. “Dad seems to think it’s unlucky that I know you.”
The words came out faster than I thought they would, faster than I could stop them.
John snorted. “What could I possibly do?”
The way he said that made me shiver. “I don’t know,” I said. “But Dad seemed really worried.”
John turned away. After a long while, he looked at me. His face no longer had that strange expression. “What do you think your grandpa was doing?” he asked.
“No idea,” I admitted, picking grass off my forearms. “But he sure sounded upset.”
“No book reading there,” John said. “You really don’t know why he’s so weird?”
“He was normal before Bird died,” I said, ignoring the churning in my stomach.
But John was craning his neck to the sky. “Hey, see that? That’s Jupiter.”
He pointed to a bright star that didn’t twinkle; it just hung there, poised and beautiful.
“Jupiter?” I said softly, looking up into the millions of miles of sky. I was glad that planets don’t care if your grandpa doesn’t speak, or if you have a friend named John, or if the secrets in your family are like the endless, layered strata of the earth. “How do you know that’s not a star?” I asked.
“Stars twinkle. Planets don’t. If it doesn’t twinkle, it could be a planet or a satellite or a slow-moving comet.” He scratched the back of his leg with his other foot. “But that’s Jupiter, for sure—it has a reddish color.”
The scent of rosemary from Dad’s garden drifted over to where we were standing, the scent that was supposed to protect us from duppies. I wondered if Grandpa was hungry or sad because Dad had forgotten to bring him food. That thought surprised me: I’d only ever thought of Grandpa as being angry. Not hungry. Or sad.
John and I stared up at the sky until our necks ached, watching the stars rise through the blackness and keep their night vigil over the earth. When the mosquitoes got so bad all we were doing was slapping ourselves, John went home and I went inside.
The house was quiet, the TV off. The strange sounds coming from Grandpa’s room had stopped. My heart felt full and swollen, though. It was just yesterday that Grandpa had hit John, though it seemed like eons ago. And how could John be such a good friend and yet be so ready to go into outer space and leave everyone behind?
It was then that I spotted something on the kitchen floor—John’s arrowhead. It must have fallen out of his pocket, I realized as I picked it up. He was supposed to put it under his pillow tonight. I grabbed the arrowhead, put on my shoes, and slipped out the door.
The sky was never so big. I felt like an ant making my way over the dark earth as I ran on the finely ground gravel road, up the little swelling hill, and then back down it on the other side. I ran quicker than the mosquitoes could find me. To my surprise, I wasn’t even nervous about knocking on Mr. McLaren’s door at night. John would have just gotten home and would be awake, even if the others had turned in early.
But I didn’t need to worry about that; their house was full of glowing windows. I guess they didn’t worry about their electricity bill the way my parents did. It seemed warm and alive, that house. Filled with life.
I rang the doorbell, and footsteps sounded inside. I covered the arrowhead with both hands.
The door opened, and Mr. McLaren stood before me. He was taller and older than I remembered, with his thin hair cropped close to his face and lines running by his mouth, even though he wasn’t smiling. I suddenly felt unsure of myself.
He looked down at me, surprised. “Why, Jewel,” he said. “What’s going on?”
My neck felt hot. “Um, I just wanted to give something to John,” I said.
“John?” Mr. McLaren’s eyebrows furrowed. “John who?”
CHAPTER TEN
THE next morning, I dug holes everywhere. I dug farther from my circle than ever before, hacking with my stick into the hard, packed dirt, making holes upon holes upon holes. My pockets sagged with pebbles, heavy with the weight of John’s lie.
Or whoever he was.
Every part of me ached, in the saddest-kind-of-sad ache I could ever imagine, an ache that filled my blood and my fingernails and my liver. I didn’t know you could ache this much. And I didn’t know that Mr. McLaren’s voice could lodge in my mind, anchoring there for forever those two awful words: John who?
The ache inside me took on a hard edge, and my jaw tightened.
How could I have been so stupid?
Plop, plop, plop. Three pebbles were for John’s dumb mouth, that it could be glued shut forever. One pebble was for how upset and scared Mom was at dinner last night. Two pebbles were for my ankle, which I twisted on the way here. Ten pebbles were so that I’d never talk to John again.
I had a lot more pebbles to go. A lot.
I was thinking so hard I didn’t even hear footsteps behind me. “I thought I’d find you here.”
I jumped up and spun around to find John. My throat tightened. “I went to Mr. McLaren’s house last night.” It was an accusation.
“I know.” He shoved his hands deeper into the pockets of his shorts.
“Your uncle.”
“He is.” John looked at the ground. Not at me.
“Is not.”
“Is too.”
“Stop lying to me,” I said, my voice rising loudly. My fingers tightened around the pebbles in my hand. “He didn’t even know who you are. Where do you live, really?”
“With him.”
Quick as a flash, I threw a pebble at John. It sailed through the air, over his shoulder. His mouth dropped open and he looked at me as if I was crazy. I was just as surprised as he was.
“Go away,” I said.
“Jewel. I have to tell you something.”
“Go away!” I started chucking stones at him, one after another after another, throwing at him all the ache inside me. John ran at me and twisted one of my wrists with both hands, and before I knew it I was on the ground, my knees digging into the freshly upturned earth, my arm still in his grip.
“Let go of me!” I cried, squirming. Pain shot through my elbow and shoulder.
“I have to tell you something!” he shouted.
“I don’t care,” I said, and I squirmed harder.
“Shut up! My name’s not John, okay? You happy?”
I froze and looked at him. “What? What do you mean?”
His whole face twisted up. “My name’s Eugene.”
“You lied about your name?”
His hands were gripping my wrist real tight, like maybe my squirming was tougher than he expected. “Yeah,” he said after a long while. He didn’t look at me. “I didn’t mean to.”
“Lie to me? What does that mean? And why would you lie about—”
The soft look on his face disappeared. “Who cares?” he said. He dropped my arm and stalked away. I scrambled to my feet, slapped the dirt from my knees, and stomped after him.
“What’s wrong with ‘Eugene’?” I called after him.
He spun around. His eyes were hot, angry. “It’s the name of Jack’s father.”
Jack. His adoptive father. I didn’t get it.
“She couldn’t even give me a name.” His hands tightened into fists.
“Is your dad dad named John?” I asked.
“I don’t know!” he shouted suddenly. “I don’t know anything, okay?” He turned away from me.
It was so strange to hear John, the astronaut and the best would-be teacher in the world, say that he didn’t know anything. Of course, I knew he was talking about his birth family, not about Jupiter or pressure or quasars. But my insides knotted up like a gnarled tree trunk when he said that: One moment he seemed to know everything, and the next moment he knew nothing at all.
I swallowed, but the gnarled feeling didn’t go away. “Were you home when I rang the doorbell?” I asked.
“Yeah.” He dug in the dirt with the tip of his shoe.
I crossed my arms. “Then why didn’t you say anything?”
“I’d have to explain things to my uncle,” he said quietly. “He’d be so mad at me if he found out.”
“Oh, but I wouldn’t?”
“You don’t get it.”
He was right. I didn’t get it, not any of it. How could he just call himself John like that, I fumed. I mean, I don’t like my name either, but I don’t go running around telling folks my name’s Jenny. And anyway, even if he wanted to give himself a different name, why couldn’t he have picked the name Sam? Or Tom?
I could swear the sun moved an inch during all the silence.
He fidgeted, looking at the ground, the grasses. Some of my pebbles that I’d buried poked through the earth. “Why do you bury stones?” he asked.
I shrugged, turned, and headed toward the footpath, away from the cliff. If he could have secrets, so coul
d I.
“Look, Jewel,” he said, stepping in front of me. “I meant it when I said we’re friends.”
“So what should I call you?” I said. The words were sharper than I thought they’d be.
“Call me John.”
I cocked my head at him and gave him a look.
He took a deep breath. “Really. John.”
“Uh-huh.”
For a moment, he looked like a little kid. “It could be my secret name. I don’t like being called Eugene,” he said. “But John? It’s a good name. Solid.” He struck his chest with his fists, twice, like a gorilla. I smiled. I couldn’t help it.
“I like how I feel when my name’s John.” His voice was firm again. He stuck his hand out toward me. “Shake on it?”
I felt my lips pursing up. How could his name change how he felt about himself? But then I realized maybe that’s what Grandpa was trying to do when he nicknamed my brother Bird. Maybe Grandpa wanted Bird to feel invincible. Soaring.
I took his hand, slowly. “I guess,” I said.
But I wasn’t so sure anymore. Not about anything.
When I got home, Dad was watching a football match on TV, the non-American kind. Americans call football “soccer,” but it makes more sense to call it “football,” if you think about it. Especially since American football players mostly use their hands, not their feet. Anyway, football is Dad’s favorite sport, by far.
He looked really intent on the game, so I headed to my room to grab some paper and sketch wildflowers, but he said, “Where’d you go, honey?”
I stopped. “John and I hung out for a while,” I said. But it was a lie. We didn’t hang out. We fought. At the cliff, where I shouldn’t be. And his name wasn’t John. How many times can you lie with those few words? An ugliness crept under my skin, and I swallowed. I wanted to run from the living room and hide under my covers, I felt so ugly.
“That boy. John. I don’t know about him.” Dad gave me a look that spoke a whole lot more than the words coming out of his mouth.
“What do you mean?” I asked Dad carefully. Did he know about John’s name? Then I realized I didn’t know about John either. Maybe Dad was right, there was something funny about him. A part of me suddenly regretted keeping his secret.