by Jamie Sumner
“That was the longest, fastest sentence in history,” I say.
“I’m serious.”
“So am I. You clocked in at, like, three seconds. And the conjunctions!” She’s only an inch or two taller than me. Our eyes are almost level. Almost.
“Hugo,” she says.
“Emilia.”
She sighs.
“Just don’t screw it up, okay?”
With that resounding endorsement, I salute her. Then I remember her mom in the hallway in her pajama pants and Emilia’s face stretched tight with embarrassment, and I add, “I promise.”
Her shoulders lower half an inch, and she almost smiles. “You can call me Em.”
“Okay, Em. I also solemnly swear to take the Paw Print seriously and to prevent Vij from doing as much harm as I am able. Okay?”
“Okay.” Her grin is lightning fast—gone before I can fully register it. “Now get to work. We have deadlines.”
* * *
I’m shocked to find Dad leaning against the Jeep outside the school when our meeting ends. This is the first time I’ve seen him in daylight in five days. It’s colder than it was this morning. I shove my hands in my pockets and keep my head down as I walk to the car. Music blares from the stereo, and for a reason I can’t pin down, it makes me mad. He waves a Starbucks cup under my nose when I reach him. It’s my favorite—peppermint hot chocolate with extra whipped cream.
Something’s up.
“Thought I’d take off early so we could grab pizza at Antonio’s.” That’s our neighbors’ restaurant, and he knows I love their pizza even more than I love this hot chocolate. I don’t need to see Dad’s trash to read the guilt on his face. He feels bad for ditching his family for the last few weeks, and he thinks pizza will fix everything. Some things never change. He used to do this back home when he’d work twelve-hour days, six days a week. I’d get home from school and he’d have the Jeep packed with all our camping equipment and he’d whisk us away and it would be awesome and we’d fish and sleep in hammocks under the stars and get lost in the woods for a day or two. But the minute we’d pull into the driveway, still smelling of campfire, he’d disappear, back to the office, and Mom and I would be forgotten, again.
I dump my backpack over the seat and slam the door. Heat blasts me in the face. It’s aimed right at eye level, or, let’s be clear here, my eye level, which is everybody else’s middle. I tilt the vents. “Is Mom coming?” I ask.
“No. She’s got a few phone consultations lined up. There’s a lot to get ready before she can start seeing clients.” He shrugs, like he doesn’t understand how she’ll be a therapist in our living room any better than I do. “So how was school?”
“Fine.”
“What about the newspaper? Do you like the other kids?”
“Newsletter. And it’s fine. They’re fine.” He’d know all about them if he were ever home.
After an awkward pause where he tries to take a sip of his too-hot latte and spits it back through the little hole in the lid, he says, “Well, work is fine too. Good, actually! They have me calibrating the lifts and clearing some of the trails. I get to drive a snowmobile!” His glasses fog up in the steam from his drink. I wonder what the other, much younger ski instructors with dreadlocks and goggle perma-tans think of my dad.
“That’s great, Dad.” I lean my head against the cold window and sip my hot chocolate. By the time we pull into Antonio’s, he’s asked me what I’m reading in English; told me all about his boss, a twenty-eight-year-old Swedish man who skied in the 2018 Winter Olympics; and wondered aloud if self-driving skimobiles could ever be a thing. He’s trying to fit all the conversations he’s missed into one. This is also what he does—he talks at me instead of with me. I sit a few seconds longer in the car after he gets out. I want a do-over. I want to rewind back to summer when we moved here, and I want him to keep all his promises. There have been too many missed dinners and missed meetings at the bus stop by now. It feels like we’ll never catch up.
He waves at me from the open doorway to the restaurant. I leave my half-drunk hot chocolate in the cup holder and get out of the car. What choice do I have? What choice do I ever have but to follow him?
When our food arrives at the table, he eats four slices. I can’t even finish one. I would have told him I had pizza for lunch, if he’d bothered to ask.
* * *
After spending all week trailing Vij while he interviewed the janitors and secretaries and student council members about the new water bottle fill-up stations, I’ve come to realize something: Vij could sell socks to an octopus. He can get anyone to go along with anything. “Are they hard to clean?” “Is the water any better than what’s already in the fountains?” “Can we make it flavored?” “Can we get one installed in the locker room?” Everyone loves him and answers whatever he asks, even Janitor Phil, who thinks the only problem with Beech Creek Middle is that it allows children inside the building.
The thing about Vij is, if he really cares about something, no one can do it better. Like snowboarding. We’d all grown up doing the peewee ski school. It was twenty minutes on the mountain and an hour in the lodge drinking hot chocolate out of Styrofoam cups and comparing who had more mini marshmallows. “Skiing” was a moving sidewalk, like in the airport, that pulled you halfway up the easiest baby slope, and then you’d kind of scoot and skid your way down. The instructors would tell us to keep our skis in the shape of pie wedges or pizza slices to make sure we went slow. I always obeyed, because I had no choice. As the smallest kid whose mom sent him with a doctor’s note listing all prior sicknesses and a novel on my traumatic birth, the instructors kept me right in front of them. Every time I almost fell, they would hoist me up under the armpits before I hit the ground. Sometimes I wonder if I’d be a different skier, a different kind of person maybe, if they’d let me crash.
But Vij never listened or waited for anyone to tell him what to do. He kept his skis parallel and shot straight down the mountain. Which is why, when we were eight and on a family trip to Copper Mountain, Uncle Dave let him snowboard. I think Uncle Dave figured it would slow him down. And it did, at first. Going down the mountain sideways instead of straight takes some getting used to. Vij ended up either on his back or his knees with snow up his nose most of the first day. But by the second, he’d started to get the hang of it, and by the third, my Aunt Soniah had to hide his snowboard during a bathroom break so he would stop and eat lunch. He was faster than I was on my skis. I didn’t even ask my parents if I could try. I knew their answer.
Garbology is the first thing I can do that he can’t. And now it’s Friday, the weekend, and he hasn’t brought it up once since Monday. Not even when Micah asked, “Will you look in Mrs. Jacobsen’s trash and tell me if I passed my vocab quiz?” I almost do it. After trailing behind Vij on his interviews like a loyal sidekick, or lapdog, I miss that rush I got when I interpreted Adra’s stuff and saw everyone’s eyes get round and impressed. But I shake my head. It won’t be as good without a bigger audience. And then I flinch at the thought. How did I go from avoiding it at all costs to wanting to make it more showy?
When Vij stops me by my locker after the last bell, I think for sure he’s going to ask about it. I’m already preparing my agreement when he says, “My parents are bringing us over to your place tonight for fish Friday. Want me to bring the new Madden?”
“Uh, I guess.” So he’s already forgotten about garbology. It must not have been that impressive after all. I cough to cover the sound of disappointment in my voice.
“You guess? Where’s the enthusiasm? Where’s that old Hugo charm?” He dances around me backward as we move toward the parking lot. Two seventh-grade girls stop and watch. For a tiny second, I wish for him to trip. He holds out a fist for me to bump and doesn’t miss a beat. When I get on my bus the seventh-grade girls are there too. They look right past me.
I keep my head down all the way home, regretting fish Friday and all the rest of Mom’s new stress-
induced Catholicism. It’s just like the Southern cooking. She can’t help herself. In Denver, Mom was too busy working full time to commit to all the rituals. But now we’ve done fish every Friday since we’ve moved. And by “we” I mean me and Mom while Dad is MIA up the mountain. We also never miss a Sunday Mass now, and I’m pretty sure Mom’s got Father Joseph on speed dial. He lets her advertise her counseling services in the church atrium. She pinned up flyers on the notice board next to ads for roommates and pet sitting and cleaning services. Let me be clear: I do not want strange people crying on my couch, but if Mom going back to work gets me out of a few Friday dinners and Sunday morning Masses, I won’t complain. I wish it would get me out of this one. For the first time since we moved, I don’t want to hang out with Vij.
* * *
By the time the front door opens upstairs, I’ve managed to shove all my dirty clothes under the bed and all my clean clothes that Mom told me to fold a week ago into the back of my closet. Mom never cares what my room looks like unless we have company. I think people you’re related to shouldn’t count as company, but when has anyone ever asked my opinion? I sniff the air and cringe. I carried a tuna sandwich down here on Tuesday and just found it on my dresser. The air is heavy with fish funk.
“Hugo, dinner! Your cousins are here!” Mom yells from the top of the stairs, even though she always orders me to walk up the ten steps and talk in a normal voice.
Everyone’s at the table when I get to the kitchen. Mom is dishing out shrimp scampi and laughing at Uncle Dave, who’s telling some story about how he caught Aunt Soniah dancing to a Taylor Swift song.
“I was not.”
“You were.”
“I was reorganizing our tax files!”
“That was an awful lot of moving and shaking for tax purposes. It was”—he pauses and snaps his fingers—“what’s that song? ‘Baby, Just Say Yes’?”
Aunt Soniah moves Adra’s juice glass closer to her with one hand and knocks Vij’s elbows off the table with the other. She lifts her chin. “It was ‘Love Story.’ ”
“Yes!” Uncle Dave hoots. It sounds just like Dad. They look alike too—tall, redheaded, and ten shades paler than the weathered Coloradoans. Mom didn’t even set a plate for Dad. I guess we’re done pretending he’s “on his way.” I glance toward the empty space where he should be. I would trade a million special dinners at Antonio’s for him to show up at the kitchen table.
“Adra, honey, how’s school?” Mom asks.
Adra puts down her fork and dabs her mouth with her napkin like a dainty old lady. “It’s going well, Aunt Marion. Thank you for asking.” I want to ask about her drawing. I want to buy her a new pack of erasers. I want her to stop cutting each shrimp into three equal parts before eating it.
“And you, Hugo?” Uncle Dave turns to me. “Vijay told me you joined the newsletter with him. Excellent!” Uncle Dave reminds of a puppy that always lunges with good-natured friendliness at the nearest human. I guess that’s why he’s in sales.
“Uh, yeah. I’m still trying to figure out what I’m supposed to be doing, but it’s good so far.”
“But you’re settling in okay?” Aunt Soniah asks. Her eyes dart toward Mom, who shakes her head a fraction. What was that about?
Vij answers for me. “Hugo’s great, Mom. Can we go downstairs now?” He doesn’t check with me if I want to go downstairs. Typical. It’s Vij’s world and we’re just living in it.
“Not until you’re done eating.”
He shoves a giant forkful of pasta into his mouth, chews, coughs, drinks his entire glass of water in one go.
“Done!” His chin is shiny with butter.
“Disgusting,” Adra says.
“Agreed,” Uncle Dave adds.
Vij grabs me by the elbow and pulls me toward the steps before anyone, including me, can disagree.
* * *
We’re one hour into Madden and his Aaron Rodgers has beat my Cam Newton three games in a row. And he’s not even trying. He keeps checking his phone.
I miss another first down and Vij doesn’t notice. I throw the controller across the room. That finally gets his attention. He looks up from his phone, but keeps his finger on it so it stays lit.
“Dude, what was that?”
“I hate Madden.”
“Nobody hates Madden.”
“Don’t tell me what I hate.”
He raises his hands. The problem with cousins is you can’t fight with them like you fight with friends because you can’t escape them. They will always be there at the fish Friday or Christmas dinner or summer cookout. You’re stuck for life.
I could explain to Vij why I’m mad—but then I would have to admit that I really wanted to do the garbology thing, and that is just too embarrassing, even for family. Instead, I sigh and retrieve the controller from under my desk.
“Let’s just play,” I say. But before I can unpause, the doorbell rings. It’s nine o’clock. Nobody rings the doorbell this late, unless Mom finally got fed up with Dad and locked him out.
You can hear every tiny noise from down here, whether you want to or not. Chairs scrape back from the table. Footsteps plod down the hall. The door creaks open and voices start talking in muffled tones. Finally, the sound of Mom calling down the stairs, “Hugo, honey, can you come up? You have company.”
Company? Everyone I know is in this house. Out of the corner of my eye I catch Vij smiling, smirking really. He’s not looking at his phone anymore.
“Who did you invite over?”
“No one.” He shrugs and pulls at the hood of his sweatshirt. “I mean, I might have mentioned to a few guys that we were hanging out tonight.”
“What guys?”
“Just Jack and Gray and Andrew and Micah, but Micah couldn’t make it. His grandparents don’t like to drive at night.”
“Andrew? I don’t even know Andrew. Isn’t he friends with Chance?” My pulse ramps up. Mom shouts my name again.
“Andrew hangs around Chance because he wants to get on the basketball team, but he’s not really friends with him,” Vij explains, calm as can be. “He’s a good guy. I swear.”
Maybe it’s true, but I don’t want to risk Andrew reporting back to Chance about my Star Wars bedspread. My fishy basement bedroom. The clothes spilling out of my closet. You don’t give the enemy a tour of your headquarters.
“Hugo, get up here now!” Mom is on the top step. I can see her shadow. I can’t move.
“Who said you could invite anyone over? This isn’t your house,” I whisper to Vij.
Vij stands and pulls me up with him. “I’m doing you a favor, man.”
I knuckle-punch him hard in the shoulder and walk upstairs.
Jack and Gray and Andrew are huddled in the hallway, which still doesn’t have any pictures on the walls and looks even smaller with all three of them trying to stand on the rug where Mom has asked them to take off their boots.
“I’ll bring down hot chocolate in a little bit. Or Dr Pepper? Would you boys like some Dr Pepper? We also have some fudge that Sister Anita gave us last week. Oh wait”—she throws up her hands like a crossing guard—“is anyone allergic to nuts?” I can’t find a single word and Mom’s got a million too many.
“Hey, guys!” Vij calls from behind me. “Come on down! We’ve got Madden.”
Andrew gives me the cool-guy nod as he marches past. When he’s gone, I turn to Mom.
“I’ve got it. Stay. Up. Here.”
“All right.” Her voice goes high. “You boys have fun!”
Once we’re downstairs, I don’t know what to do. I only have two controllers, so Madden’s no good unless three people want to watch, and there’s nothing less exciting than watching someone else play a video game. Jack throws himself face-first on my bed and Gray dumps both their backpacks on the floor. Andrew’s in my history class, but we’ve never actually talked. He’s tall, like five and a half feet, and he looks exactly like every basketball player in existence—knobby shoulders and g
iant hands. I watch him turn in a circle, checking out my room. It’s like watching the security guard go through your stuff at the airport. You know there’s nothing to hide, but still, you feel guilty.
“What’s that smell?” he asks.
“Uh, my mom made fish.”
“Oh. Cool.” He wipes his nose on the sleeve of his sweatshirt and hands me his backpack. I hold it, because, what does he want me to do? Hang it up like a coat? He watches from his great height. No one speaks.
Finally, Andrew scratches at the too-long hair by his collar and asks, “So how does it work? Do I show it to you all at once or one thing at a time?”
“Uh? What?”
I turn to give Vij the “this guy is crazy” look, but Vij is smiling that stupid smile and suddenly it all clicks.
“No.” I toss the bag back to Andrew.
“What?” Vij is the picture of innocence.
“I’m not doing it.” Now that garbology is back on the table, I panic. Just because Vij and the guys and Em thought it was awesome doesn’t mean someone like Andrew will. And he will for sure go back and tell Chance what a loser I am.
“Look, Hugo,” Gray says, squatting down next to his backpack, “I know you still feel weird about looking through people’s trash.”
I feel my ears go red, because that’s not actually true. I’m worried about how people will react, but the actual act of garbology, I love. It’s like having access to a person’s diary and all their secrets, whether they mean to share them or not.
“So you all planned this?” I ask Vij. I am equal parts relieved that he didn’t forget and terrified about what will happen next if I agree.
Andrew turns to Vij.
“He didn’t know I was coming? Is this garbology thing even real?”
“Of course it’s real!” I snap, because he can at least talk to me in my own room.
“Hugo,” Jack says, “Andrew here has a problem and we think you might be able to help.”