by Beth Vrabel
“You don’t have to,” I said. “I mean, I think you have by now.”
“That’s the thing, kid,” Jeff said and smiled. “I want to. I like having you around.”
“I like having you around,” I said, even though it felt awkward.
“Cool.”
“Cool.”
“I know I’m not your dad.” Jeff picked at a grease stain on his nail. “But … I wish I were.”
“Me, too,” I whispered.
“All right, get out of here before we start hugging and sharing our feelings.”
Being around Landon was even more awkward than the conversation with Jeff. It started out with Landon showing me all these images of bear prints on his phone. I took him around back and pointed out the tracks in the mud.
I knew it was useless—Ron had tromped all through there just a couple hours before and came up empty—and I think Landon knew it, too. But we kept going.
“So you and Rina?” Landon asked. “Are you, like, a thing?”
I shrugged. “She’s cool, when you get to know her.”
Landon raised an eyebrow, but didn’t say anything.
The tracks ended near the stream. So many footprints merged there, we couldn’t make out the bear’s anymore. The light rain was just enough to turn everything to a muddy mess. I checked the websites for any Bucket Bear sightings. Nothing since this morning.
“Maybe no one could find it today because somehow it got the bucket off? Like maybe it’s just fine now,” Landon said.
“Maybe,” I said, even though I knew it wasn’t true.
Enough is enough.
“So,” Landon said as we gave up and headed home, the hoods on our sweatshirts up and tight around our faces. “How was it?”
I knew he meant visiting Mom. I let my head fall back so rain pattered against my face, hoping it would help words to describe the day take root and grow in my mind. After a while, I just shook my head. “She comes home in a week.”
“At least she comes home, man.” And I knew he was thinking of his dad.
Back at the gate, Landon shoved his hands in his pockets. We stood there for a minute, awkward again. Should I invite him in? Or was this a one-time mercy thing to make up for the concussion? Jeff came to the back porch.
“See you at school?” Landon asked.
“Yeah,” I nodded. “See you.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
The longest week of school in the history of time crawled to a close Friday with an assembly. Again, Mr. Anderson called us out to the (former) football field. It was frosty enough for his breath to make clouds that drifted over us as he spoke on the makeshift stage.
Rina shivered next to me, and pulled knit mittens out of her enormous backpack. “What?” she said when I raised an eyebrow.
“That bag, it’s like the one on the kids’ show. You know, where the nanny keeps pulling furniture out of it?”
Rina yanked on the end of a scarf, toppling notebooks, pens, and books out of the bag in the process. The scarf was long enough to reach her ankles. “Just for that, I’m not sharing.”
I crossed my arms. Without wanting to, my eyes scanned the woods. I knew there wasn’t much hope for the bear. Ron had stopped answering my texts and emails, sending every message to voicemail.
“No sightings posted on any of our sites,” Rina said quietly. Figures she’d know I was looking for the bear.
I nodded, now looking straight ahead again. “Yeah. I know.”
“Sorry, Noah,” she added.
“Whatever. It’s just a bear.”
Rina moved a half step closer to me, so our arms pressed against each other. “Hey, when are you getting your mom tomorrow?”
My stomach seized up at her words. Mom was coming home tomorrow. It didn’t feel real. I couldn’t imagine her just being home, hanging out around the kitchen table, going to the grocery store. It didn’t feel real. “Not until late afternoon.”
“Cool. I’ll come over in the morning.”
“What? Why?”
Rina heaved a trademark sigh. “For the newspaper. We have to get started on the next edition.”
I opened my mouth, but Rina covered it with her mitten. “Don’t even say it,” she warned. “You’re in this newspaper club for the long haul, bear or no bear. If you want to stick with the animal beat, that’s cool. Ron called yesterday and said we’re experiencing an influx of raccoons in the area.”
“What?” I said into Rina’s mitten.
“Yeah.” Rina lowered her hand, but locked me in place with narrowed eyes. “He says raccoons are flocking to the area. Seems people are leaving out food, mostly around places where Bucket Bear had been spotted. He even asked if I knew anything about it.”
I shifted a little and pointed toward the stage. “Looks like Mr. Anderson’s about to start.”
Rina stepped so she was square in front of me again. “Ron wanted to know if we were leaving food out for the bear. I told him not to be ridiculous, that feeding a wild animal is dangerous and stupid.” She jabbed a mittened thumb into my chest. “Really stupid.”
“I’ll stop, all right?” I snapped. “She’s dead, anyway.”
Rina sighed again, this one just a sad puff of air. “Probably. But it’s weird they haven’t found a body. I guess, anyway. I mean, you don’t really hear about bear bodies being found and you’d think they die all the time. I wonder if she found a cave or something.”
I swallowed but didn’t say anything.
“Sorry.” Rina’s face flushed. “I am, really. It’s just that keeps getting to me. I get that the bear was savvy about getting away from all of us. But if she died, you’d think we would’ve found her. Ron said disposing of that big bear that was hit by the tractor trailer two months ago was a huge pain.”
“Rina, stop.” I rubbed at my eyes with the heels of my hands, trying to smudge out the image of the bear wasting away alone. I bent over a little as my stomach churned.
“You have a surprisingly delicate stomach,” Rina pointed out.
“Nothing about me is delicate.”
Rina snorted.
Anything else Rina would’ve said was cut off by Mr. Anderson. “You’re probably wondering why I’ve called you all out here on this frosty morning,” he yelled into the microphone. “Well, I have an important announcement, and it just had to be shared here.”
Grinning, Mr. Anderson beckoned and Brenna, in her little cheerleading uniform, bounded onto the stage. Even though it was so cold her knees shook, Brenna clapped as she bounced to the front. “Give me a ‘B’!” she shouted.
The cluster of kids around me roared. “B!” Brenna continued spelling out the Bruins. Even Rina chirped in a little, knocking me with her elbow when I waggled another eyebrow at her.
“Whatever,” she muttered but her smile stretched.
I snickered and bent to root through her bag.
“What are you doing?” she yelped.
“Looking for an orange-and-black Bruins sweatshirt. I’m sure you’ve got one in here!”
“I do not!” Rina yelled and pushed my hands off the backpack with a laugh. Suddenly she froze, her eyes locking in on something in the distance.
“What?” I turned to look where her eyes had snagged. Nothing but trees.
“Nothing.” Rina shook her head. “Just a shadow, I guess.” She grabbed a notebook and pen out of her bag and started scribbling notes for the assembly. “Better pay attention,” she said as I scanned the tree line for what had gotten her attention. “You could be assigned this story.”
Mr. Anderson took the microphone back from Brenna, who kept right on clapping as she trotted off the stage. “Our fund-raiser was successful! We raised five hundred dollars for MADD! And I got word this week that at tomorrow’s TriCounty Football League meeting, the Ashtown Bruins will officially be allowed back in the game next season. Congratulations for your hard work and for raising awareness for MADD!”
All around us, people went nuts. Th
e loudest, of course, was Landon.
“Starting next fall,” Mr. Anderson continued, “we will reestablish our football team. So pack up those buckets, kids. Please. And go, Bruins!”
My stomach twisted again. Stupid me. Here I thought with Micah forgiving me, with me forgiving Mom, that I’d stop feeling sick every time I thought of the Bruins. I thought I had dealt with it. Stupid me.
Because as soon as the crowd roared again, my ears rang with the sound of a crash. All I saw were blurs. All I felt was a rush and a fall.
And right then and there—right when everything was getting better for everyone—I threw up.
“Like I said, delicate stomach,” Rina murmured.
Mr. Davies walked me into the building to get to the nurse’s office. He stood about two feet away from me and kept shaking his head.
“What?” I snapped. I mean, seriously, it’s bad enough to be doing the walk of shame with puke crusted on your shirt. Having a teacher you hate smirking and rolling his eyes at everyone you pass is beyond the realm of tolerable situations. (Yeah, I know. I sound like Rina.)
Mr. Davies snorted. “You just can’t stand not being the center of attention, can you, Mr. Brickle?”
“What are you talking about?”
“It goes back to that whole survival of fittest thing. Here was a chance for you to adapt—to cheer along the new team—and instead you upchuck all over the place. Suddenly no one’s cheering the Bruins anymore. They’re back to being disgusted by you.”
My mouth soured again. I knew he was right. This wasn’t just a quiet little upset stomach. I pretty much sprayed everyone around me. Distractedly, I hoped Rina had a change of clothes in that massive backpack of hers. Landon wasn’t in the range of fire, but he was close enough to see. Was he back to hating me again?
I stumbled a step, and Mr. Davies shook his head again. “Speaking of survival, whatever happened to your bear?”
I didn’t say anything, just concentrated on the silver lining Mr. Davies had shared earlier that week—that he was heading to a conference over the weekend and wouldn’t be back until the middle of next week.
“Like I said,” he went on, as though I had spoken, “some animals are just too stupid to live.”
Saturday morning, the whirl of the vacuum cleaner woke me before the sun. I might’ve gotten a half hour of sleep. Partly it was because I knew it was the last night I’d be in the house without Mom. Mostly it was because of Jeff.
After he picked me up Friday afternoon, Jeff went nuts scrubbing the kitchen cabinets with a washrag and soap. “Don’t throw up on anything,” he warned, even though my stomach hadn’t bothered me again. The bathroom was spotless, even all the old magazines thrown away and extra toilet paper stacked above the tank. The whole house smelled like Lysol. I went to the pantry for a snack and thought Jeff was going to bite my head off. “Don’t you eat standing like that! I just scrubbed the floor!”
I moved to the table.
“I just washed that, too!” he said. We both stared at the only thing messy still on the table—the enormous pile of unopened letters. I grabbed a garbage bag from under the sink and shook it out. Just as I was about to sweep them all into it, Jeff said, “Noah, are you sure … ”
I nodded, dumping all the letters, then twisting the bag. “I’m going to put these in my closet. Maybe Mom will want to read them someday.”
Jeff ran his knuckles along his jaw. “Or you. Someday you might be ready.”
I shrugged.
I ended up eating some tortilla chips on the back porch. I heard some shuffling and squeaking under the porch and tried not to think about what Rina had said about the raccoons.
Jeff was washing the windows when I came inside. His cleaning streak went right on into the night.
We ate at Sal’s, and Jeff ordered an extra dozen hot wings to bring home. “You know Diane loves hot wings,” he said with a grin.
“But only if they’re cold,” I finished for him. “And only for breakfast.”
Jeff smiled. I tried to ignore the way his eyes were too bright, too watery. It felt nice to talk about her in the present, instead of just how things used to be. I swallowed around the lump lodged in my throat. She’s coming home. I was starting to believe it, I guess.
As soon as we got home, Jeff went back to work, this time dusting off the blades of the kitchen ceiling fan. Then he noticed how that just sent dust down on the already-scrubbed table and he cleaned that again.
“She’s just going to be happy to be home,” I pointed out. “I mean, I don’t think she’s going to going around looking for dust bunnies, Dad.”
Jeff froze, big D-A-D spelled out invisibly in the air above him, wet washrag dripping down his arm. After a couple seconds of him being a statue and my face flaming, he softly added, “I just want it to be nice for her. For all of us.” When he turned to face me, his eyes were bright all over again.
And now, the vacuum cleaner was out all over again.
I stumbled out to the kitchen to grab a Pop-Tart that I’d have to eat on the porch.
“We need to leave in fifteen!” Jeff called over the din of the vacuum cleaner.
“But Mom isn’t getting out until three!”
“Yeah, but we gotta stop by the Shop first. I scheduled a couple quick oil changes in the morning, then we’re closing ’til Monday.”
I fired a text to Rina, telling her to meet me at the Shop instead of at home.
“Have to check in with the girlfriend?” Jeff asked.
“Shut up.”
To tell the truth, I wasn’t all that sure Rina would show up. I mean, I did throw up on her and all. But she already was perched on the bench outside the Shop when we pulled up in Jeff’s truck. Even though it was November, sun warmed the air enough to not need more than a sweatshirt.
“Want to talk out here?” I asked as Jeff went into the Shop.
“Sure.” She jerked her chin toward the woods beside the Shop. “Just aim that way if you’re going to get sick again.”
“Sorry about that.” I sat down next to her on the bench and was glad she didn’t scoot away.
“No prob.” Rina kicked at the backpack by her feet. “I had a change of clothes in my bag.”
We had just plotted out the next issue—actually, Rina had plotted; I nodded and took notes—when Jeff came out of the Shop, flipping the OPEN sign to CLOSED. “All right, got everything squared away. Ready to go get your mom, Noah?”
Rina shifted so her arm was against mine.
My stomach clenched, just for a second, but Jeff saw my grimace. “Noah?”
“Already?” I asked. Bitterness filled my mouth again.
I’m so freaking stupid. I wanted her to come home. I did. I wanted her to check my homework, to kiss the top of my head as she walked by, to hear her laugh, to see her smile. I wanted her to sleep in the next room and be the first person I saw when I woke up. I wanted it so bad my knees turned to water when I thought about it.
But I didn’t want everything to change. Or even to go back to what it was. I didn’t want Jeff to stop being my parent. I didn’t want to watch to see whether she was drinking again. I didn’t want to see people’s faces shift when they saw her next. I didn’t want to have to run my plans for after school by her.
I forgave her. I did. But that didn’t mean it was okay. That I was okay. Everything was so stupid, so messy, so mixed up. And it was all over. I was all out of time.
“Noah—”
Just then, a car with a hiccupping motor and billowing gray smoke pulled into the Shop.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
The car shuddered to a stop right behind Jeff’s truck. “Sorry!” called Jeff, waving his arms to get the driver’s attention. “We’re closed!” He swore under his breath when the engine shut off.
The car door opened but I couldn’t make out the driver behind the cloud of smoke. But as soon as he spoke, I knew just who it was. “No, no! You’ve got to fix this thing! I’ve got to be at a c
onference in Alexandria in a couple hours!”
“Mr. Davies?” Rina asked.
For a second, Mr. Davies stalled. The desperate look on his face wiped away and his usual cocky smirk appeared. His eyes flicked between Rina, me, and Jeff. Finally, Mr. Davies’s gaze settled on Jeff. “I need you to fix this right away. I have someplace to be.”
Jeff’s jaw clenched. “Sorry, man. But so do we.”
“Listen, man,” Mr. Davies spat. “I’m attending an important conference. I cannot be late. This is the only auto shop in town and this car isn’t making it anywhere.” He pulled out a worn leather wallet. “What’s it going to take?”
“I’d say a tow truck,” Jeff quipped. “You’re blocking me in.”
“Then you’ve got to fix it!” The cocky smirk disappeared for a second. “Please, just help me out.” Mr. Davies shuffled so his back was to me and Rina. His voice dipped, so Rina and I leaned forward to catch his words. “My boss is already threatening to can me. My job’s on the line here.”
Jeff grit his teeth. His chin jerked up a millimeter. “I’ll take a look,” he said, “but if I can’t get this thing running in a half hour, I’m putting her in neutral and pushing it out of the way.”
Stepping past Mr. Davies toward me, Jeff squeezed my shoulder. “A half hour, Noah. Then we’re leaving.”
I sank back onto the bench.
“How are you feeling?” Rina asked. “I know there’s a lot going on for you … your mom, and the stuff with the bear, too.”
I huffed out my nose and stared off toward the trees, trying to pull my tie-dyed feelings into straight lines again. “I feel like … I’m too much like her.”
“Oh, the bear,” Rina said. “Like you can’t shake consequences of a past decision? Sort of like how the bear has something choking her? And that you can’t really take in what’s going on because you’re partially blinded by what’s already happened to you, the way the bucket keeps the bear from seeing?”
I stared at her. “I meant my mom.”
“Oh.”
“That I make stupid, selfish decisions, like my mom.”