Mayday

by Karen Harrington

  “He was fine. Ask his mother. He was fine, right, Jennifer? He coulda been a track star if you’d let me keep training him.”

  “Training, huh?” Grandpa said.

  I pictured my voice as a solid object trapped in a jar. If only I could smash the glass and let it go free. “You don’t understand, do you?” Grandpa said. “Maybe you never will.”

  It was too much. I had to break the glass.

  “New topic!” I said, jumping up from the table. I pounded the table with my palm. Bam! Mom flinched. Blinked. The sound had been louder than a raspy whisper.

  Denny slapped his hand on the table, too. Bam! “Y-y-yeah. New topic!”

  I stood up and then Denny did, too. Everyone looked at us like we’d just come from Mars.

  Then Carrot slammed his hand on the table, too. “Yeah!” he said.

  Long seconds passed before I walked out of the room. And Denny walked out with me. I went out the garage and down the alley and bolted.

  CHAPTER 25

  And Denny ran after me.

  “Wayne… Wayne on a plane,” Denny sang.

  I waited for Denny to catch up. We stood in the middle of Cedar Drive. The stars were on fire like they were burning with anger. Like me.

  “Wayne? Do you know what you just did? You spoke! You talked!” Denny sang.

  “I know.”

  We walked all over the neighborhood. Past the water tower that went right on shining its red light as if nothing ever changed. Past the house that still had the stupid old flattened inflatable snowman in the front yard like they didn’t know it was late February and whole seasons had changed and things were starting to turn green.

  Hello, people! Be useful!

  Past the houses in the Estates that had smooth streets no one skated on but me.

  The cold air made my throat hurt, but we walked and walked until we got to the park and climbed up into the hard plastic rocket ship.

  I hadn’t spoken whole sentences for weeks, and now that I could, I pushed through the sandpapery soreness.

  Dr. P would scold me later.

  But sometimes you just have to get it out. I wanted to get everything out that night.

  This is what I told Denny.

  I was eight.

  Mom and the Flee were married. We didn’t have Mr. Darcy. The photos for the future Wall of Honor were all in a dusty album. But there was a shelf.

  His shelf.

  His stupid shelf.

  It had ribbons and trophies for track and field.

  I admired the shiny gold trophies and the blue ribbons that sent him to college. I wanted to be like him. I wanted to run fast. I wanted him to think I was like him. Maybe he’d like me. Notice me.

  One day he said, How ’bout we teach you some man skills? And I was all up for it.

  He drove us out into the country. Old gray roads near old yellow fields. That was what it looked like to me. Just roads and fields and sun and dust. No houses or streetlights, just a long hot road. So endless, it blended right into the horizon.

  He stopped the car and told me to get out. And I did. I did whatever he said. He told me to stand at the back of the car and I did. Then he shouted, Now run, boy!

  His car sped off and I ran after it. He slammed on the brakes as I caught up. Then he took off again. Same thing. Sprint. Stop. Sprint. Stop.

  He hung out the window and shouted for me to run again, then he took off. He didn’t stop. I ran and ran into clouds of dust and sun. I ran until I saw his car turn and disappear around a corner. I ran until my mouth was hot and dry.

  Red taillights.

  That was all I saw until I didn’t see them any longer. They’d shrunk in the distance. Disappeared, leaving me lost in the dusty nowhere.

  There are lots of words for scared. I experienced all of them at once. I thought, Well, I’m going to die and I have to go to the bathroom and will I ever see Mom again? Tears rose up as I ran down the road in the direction of the car. I ran and ran, and the tears didn’t have time to fall. They dried on my face. And I remember thinking, if I could outrun the speed of tears, I’d be as fast as my dad. And then I didn’t care if I did cry, because, you know, I was going to be dead soon, or worse. So I just sat beside the road and waited to die. I was sure I was going to die. Worse, I’d let my dad down.

  Later, he zipped back down the road and shouted from the car window, What a crybaby! I was just messing with you.

  And he did the whole thing again. Said he was going to do it until I stopped crying. Said he was thinking of just leaving me out there. I was ashamed. I’d let him down. Again.

  Mom found out because I’d peed my pants while I was scared and alone. The rest of that night they argued.

  Mom came into my room that night. She thought I was sleeping. She touched my head the way moms can’t help but do and whispered, I won’t let that happen again. Ever.

  I hated running after that. I hated the shelf. I tried not to hate the Flee. He was my father, after all. So I distracted myself with books. When he tried to get me to do something with him, I hid in my room and read. The more facts I learned, the more he called me stupid. Which was stupid.

  True story.

  That was what I told Denny. My throat felt like a cheese grater had gone over it, but I’d said everything. My throat hurt, but my insides felt light.

  “Grade A jerk,” Denny said.

  “You know what I hate? I hate that he just won’t act like a grown-up. He didn’t when I was a little kid and he still doesn’t. Do you know he set off fireworks inside his house?”

  “You feel better now?” Denny asked.

  “I never told anyone that.”

  “You know what my Bubbie says about secrets?”

  “What?”

  “They are like farts. They have to bubble up eventually.”

  “Your grandmother didn’t say that!”

  “But it’s still true, right? You feel relief after you get rid of both of them.”

  “True.”

  Walking back to my house that night, I looked at the sky. And even though I hadn’t thought about God or praying very much, I said a silent prayer. It was simple. I asked God for courage to say things out loud.

  Although, I admit, it scared me that God might give me what I asked for. What then?

  CHAPTER 26

  When I’d gotten back to the house with Denny, everyone was gone except Mrs. Rosenblatt. Mom and Grandpa were in the kitchen, cleaning up.

  “I’m sorry,” Mom said. Denny left and I went to my room. I wasn’t going to tell her she didn’t have to apologize. But it was really Grandpa’s fault, anyway. He kept poking the Flee. He ruined my birthday. Let him be sorry.

  Two days after that, Grandpa drove me to see Dr. P after school.

  “You can talk now,” Grandpa said. “Nothing to say?”

  Nope.

  Maybe I was being rude. Maybe I was a little mean. But I was still mad. He didn’t have to go off like that at my birthday dinner. He could have done it when Sandy wasn’t around, and I wouldn’t have minded it one bit.

  And then I was in Dr. P’s office.

  “So, Wayne, you can talk now?” Dr. Pajaczkowski asked. “And you can say my name out loud? Let’s hear it.”

  “Sir, I’m not sure I could have said your name before my throat injury.”

  He laughed. “Fair enough. You can call me Fred.”

  “Thanks, Fred.”

  When we got home, I sat outside on the porch and waited for Sandy. I’d asked her to stop by after she got out of school. It seemed better to speak to her face-to-face. I’d made the decision to just rip the Band-Aid right off. Get it over with. Break up before she could do it to me. Because I understood something about girls and Sandy. I knew I liked having Sandy as a friend because she was always nice to me. Always. Why not try to stay friends so that it wouldn’t be so awkward?

  I had a book to read, but it sat there unread for a long time. Then I nearly pruned our front bush to death, pickin
g all the crunchy leaves from it, tearing them in half, and tossing them to the sidewalk.

  All these thoughts flew around my head and I wanted them to stop. So I dove into the book. You would think I’m a nut, but I was reading a book authored by a pilot that tells you everything you wish you could ask someone in aviation. If you were thirteen and had no access to a pilot in real life, this was the book for you.

  According to Mom, anyway. She gave it to me for my birthday.

  Anyway, I opened the book right at the chapter about bird strikes and planes. Bird strikes against airplanes are serious business, especially where the birds are concerned. Did you know some airports use border collies to keep the bird population down around the runways? Also, planes fly at two hundred fifty knots when they are at an altitude under ten thousand feet. This is supposed to minimize the damage caused by birds flying into engines.

  But the thing is, why don’t the stupid birds change course? Why aren’t they scared away by the noise of the aircraft? Why can’t they feel the change in the air?

  Why?

  Reading about this didn’t take my mind off what I was about to do that afternoon.

  I recognized her mom’s muffin-delivering green car when it pulled up. Sandy got out of the car and walked up our cracked sidewalk. She held a muffin basket tight.

  “Hi, Wayne,” Sandy’s mother shouted from the car. “Be back in a little bit.”

  “Hi, Wayne,” Sandy said.

  “Cómo estás?” I asked.

  Sandy sat down next to me on the cold porch. I plucked more leaves off the bush and twisted and tore them into little pieces. “So, your voice?”

  “Yeah. It’s back,” I managed to say in a scratchy tone. My new voice was deeper and different. Like it was the voice of someone else coming from inside me.

  “That’s so great.” Sandy plucked the leaves from the bush on her side of the porch. “Are you going to come back to Beatty?”

  “Probably. Probably next year.”

  “That’s good.”

  Don’t chicken out. Don’t chicken out. You know what to do.

  “Listen,” I said.

  For a second, I couldn’t push any more words out of my mouth. I was too afraid. Why is the right thing to do often the hardest thing to do?

  So I said, “We should still be friends, but I don’t think we should sort of go out anymore.”

  Even though it made me more than a little sad to say these words to the most beautiful girl in seventh grade, all the awkwardness I’d felt around her decreased.

  Sandy’s response was quick as a wink.

  “Okay,” she said.

  It was so fast it hurt a little. But she threw her arms around me in a hug, which knocked me halfway into the bushes. “Wayne, you’re so easy to talk to. You’re the best ex-boyfriend ever!”

  “Feel free to spread that rumor around school,” I said.

  And then, as if it had all been a perfectly written scene in a movie, Mrs. Showalter hit the brakes in front of our house, Sandy bounced down the sidewalk, and their green car sped away from the scene of a breakup.

  I looked at the front porch step.

  There were two matching bald spots on the bushes flanking the sidewalk.

  Well, I’d said what I needed to say.

  After a while, a plane flew overhead pretty low. It wasn’t a commercial jet but some kind of single-engine plane. I could tell by the sound. White wings with red tips at the ends. Not big enough to have a 14A. Probably only two souls on board. I lifted my hand to its underbelly and held it in the air until it was out of sight. It circled back around. A rising trail of smoke formed. Was the plane in trouble?

  Mayday?

  It went straight up and down and made one thick line in the air. I stood up to get a better look. The smoke stopped, turned on again, and formed the shape of a heart. Then it made a giant U.

  I U.

  The message hung in the air like white cotton suspended in blue sky.

  A skywriter. Someone’s message in the sky. A love message right at the moment I said good-bye to Sandy Showalter.

  True story.

  Sad story.

  I waited for the skywriting to go all smudgy before I went inside. I went to the fridge and searched for something to eat. Using my voice to do the right thing had made me hungry.

  Grandpa strolled into the kitchen.

  “Win some, lose some, Wayne. It’s tough to get dumped, isn’t it?”

  “I didn’t get dumped. I was technically the dumper.”

  “Either way, the sound of heartbreak is loud and profound.” I wished I still had my legitimate, plane crash–caused ability to grrrr. I would have grrrrr’d at Grandpa.

  “Whatever.” I opened the fridge and grabbed the milk.

  “I guess your birthday could have been better if all that hadn’t happened the other night,” he said.

  He arranged the blue glass birds on the counter into two straight and perfect rows, then turned and looked me square in the eye.

  I knew what he was doing. That was how a drill sergeant said he was sorry. I wanted to say it was okay. But my awful birthday was like a bruise. The hurt spot would fade gradually, not right when you wanted it to. So I didn’t say anything.

  “Know what I think, Wayne?”

  “No, sir.”

  “I think we need a cheeseburger. You can eat a cheeseburger now that you can talk again, right?”

  We went out for a cheeseburger. Sure, I thought about being brave enough to come right out and set things square with Grandpa.

  So, would you like a side of fries and to tell me what those pill bottles on the counter are for?

  Yeah, I thought about it a lot. But, surprise, I had more thoughts than I could speak.

  We sat in a booth at a restaurant, and the bubbly waitress with twelve thousand buttons on her shirt told us the day’s special like a rapid-fire cheerleader drill.

  “Okay, today’s special is two entrees, one appetizer, two iced teas, and Death by Chocolate, all for one low price!”

  “We’ll take it!” Grandpa said.

  Later, as we were starting dessert, Grandpa told me, “Don’t give up, Wayne.” And I wondered for the millionth time if Grandpa had mind-reading abilities. If maybe he’d looked behind my closet door and seen my dumb collection of facts that were leading me nowhere.

  “Don’t give up on what?”

  “Girls. You’ll find the right lid to your pot,” he said, forking a big piece of cake. “She’ll be in the least likely place. I met the love of my life at a hardware store.”

  “Did she look miserable?” I asked, thinking of Denny’s theory of miserable girls.

  “More like out of place. But that’s why I noticed her.” Grandpa looked across the restaurant, a sad expression on his face. “Your grandmother. She was special.”

  “Hey, did you know that the smell of chocolate increases theta brain waves, which induce relaxation?” I said. “Chocolate is also thought to increase blood flow to the brain, so it’s possible that it makes you smarter.”

  “Well, look who’s back, Mr. Fact.” Grandpa grinned. “Let’s order a second dessert!”

  “Are you allowed to?” I asked.

  Grandpa tilted his head to the side and gave me a look. I could have asked more questions. I could have tried to get information. I could have.

  “I mean, I’m too full for any more dessert,” I lied. “This is the most I’ve eaten in months.”

  CHAPTER 27

  Three weeks and more phone calls to Liz Delaney later, and nothing had changed except muffins hardening on the kitchen counter. I don’t know why I hadn’t thrown them out.

  I went to the West Academy and did my time there. The trio of gymnasts had gotten wise to my nerdiness and even asked for my help on a math project. I went to Dr. P for one last appointment. I read books. I read my collection of facts about the flag search. I read Denny’s book about the Titanic. I read about a man who punched a two-hundred-pound alliga
tor that had clamped onto his son’s arm.

  I did everything but actually use my voice. I’d always known I could be strange, but my silence surprised even me.

  I brought our chess set into Mom’s room.

  “Want to play?” I asked.

  She smiled, so I went in and set everything up on top of her comforter. Elizabeth Bennet from Pride and Prejudice was on the TV, and Mom muted the sound while we played.

  “Tim LeMoot called,” I told her.

  “Do you like him?”

  “He’s okay,” I said. “Maybe he’s your Mr. Darcy.”

  “What do you know of Mr. Darcy?”

  “You’re kidding, right? You forced me to watch all that stuff. Plus, the dog.”

  “Forced you?”

  I stood up and did my best high-pitched-voice interpretation of a young English woman having a cow about some guy. “Oh my, oh my, I’m in such a state because I need a husband. I think I’ll go run across this field in the rain!”

  “Wayne Howard!”

  I turned my voice up a notch. “Oooh, ooooh, maybe the strong-booted Mr. LeMoot is in want of a good woman.”

  “Stop it!” She tossed a pillow at my face. My face didn’t hurt anymore.

  I pointed at the muted TV screen. “Look! She’s running across the field in the rain! I told you.”

  After I took a bow for my performance, my audience of one was weeping. Not happy tears for my wonderful and moving portrayal of an English woman. But big, giant, sloppy tears.

  “Mom?” I sat on the bed. “Hey, did you know that it was the Roman soldiers who first wore neckties? Then other armies wore them to signify their country’s colors. And much later, the French used ties as a fashion statement, but they were meant to just absorb sweat, so it’s sort of gross when you think about it.”

  Mom took me by the hands and said, “I love your brain. It’s very handsome.” Then she tried to touch my eyebrow, and because she was feeling bad, I let her do her mom thing.

  “Did you know that the Jewish religion has six hundred and thirteen commandments to follow, as opposed to Christianity’s ten?”