Amir continues to beam.
“Another time,” he says. “But don’t wait too long. We have a small problem with the van, but as soon as we fix it, Destiny and I are eager to meet our future.”
Destiny, Destiny, Destiny.
She has a giggle like a chipmunk’s chattering. I can’t imagine worse torture than being locked in a VW van with these two, all the way to the coast.
Except maybe having nowhere to go at all.
•
Just as I get home, a chopper sweeps overhead toward the lake.
We’ve always been aware of the air.
When Judith and I were kids, we used to build elaborate forts in the woods. After combing the forest for a spot where four trees made a rough square, we’d spend all day, or many days, hauling deadwood and downed branches to weave our walls. Then we’d make an evergreen bough roof.
One summer, thanks to two perfectly positioned branches, we even had a loft.
That particular fort was the one to beat all forts. We’d “borrowed” some plastic piping from Dad and rigged running water from the creek to create a kitchen. We’d built an evergreen couch. And after raiding an old hunting camp we’d found on one of our more distant rambles, we even had a second-story roof over the loft — an orange tarp stretched between the tree trunks.
It was a palace.
It was such a good fort that when it was finished, we dragged Mom and Dad through the trees to see it.
“Look at the loft!”
“Running water!”
“Roof!”
But the minute Dad moved, we fell silent. He was like a giant towering over us. He grabbed the tarp and yanked it down so hard that branches snapped and our loft tumbled. We scrambled out of the way.
“What do you think you’re doing?” His voice, that quiet, was even worse than yelling. “You put up a bright orange flag in the forest, like a signal for anyone passing overhead to see?”
We stayed silent.
“Are you a couple of idiots? Can you not think?”
Dad stood there while Judith and I took apart every branch of that fort, spreading the pieces through the trees, tears and snot dripping onto the leaves.
I think that’s the first time I knew our family was different. That we had secrets. That we weren’t like the families in town, or the ones in books. For some reason, we were hiding. We couldn’t play fort because we were already involved in some real-life game of hide-and-seek.
•
There’s another chopper after church on Sunday. It doesn’t travel the same course as the first. It’s not big enough to be a logging bird and it’s strange to see a helicopter on a Sunday.
Dad figures there’s trouble coming.
“We’re going to scatter the plants,” he announces after lunch. “You and me, Isaac. We’ll have to poke around a bit, find the sunniest spots. Put them here and there.”
“What about water?”
“We’ll have to haul it.”
“Fucking prick,” Walt says.
For once I agree with Walt. Hauling buckets of water might work for ten plants, but we’ve got a few hundred. And I’m the one who’ll be doing the hauling.
Dad slaps a hand on my shoulder as he makes for the door.
“Little hard work never hurt no one,” he says.
Which is not precisely true. Dad’s got a messed-up back and Walt’s altogether broken.
“Prick,” Walt says.
“Indeed.”
Mom shoots me a glance, but I ignore her.
Walt leans in suddenly, eyes locked on mine. His mouth opens, closes, his tongue circling his lips the way it does when he’s striving for real words.
“Been here…too long,” he manages.
“You think?” I don’t expect him to answer. We have these pseudo-conversations sometimes, Walt and I, when he manages words. He says something, I reply, and he says something entirely unrelated. It might look like an exchange from a distance, but it’s not.
“Gotta go. Move on…to the other slice. No. No. No. Slice.” His mouth contorts. “Place,” he spits finally.
“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves,” Mom says. She pours Walt a cup of tea and sits down beside him.
“Signs,” Walt says.
I look back and forth between him and Mom. What is he talking about?
His mouth moves frantically again. “Signs don’t go away just…because you keep your eyes closed.”
It’s not exactly the words that make me pause. It’s the way he says them. He looks directly at Mom, then at me.
I don’t remember when I last heard a sentence this clear from Walt.
He leans in, forearms on the table and one gnarled finger pointing at me. “How long we been here?”
“Ten years, at least.” I look at Mom for confirmation, and she nods. Before that we had a squat on some other land a couple hours to the north.
“Grandpa had his eye on this property for years, even when your grandma was still alive,” Mom tells me.
“Know other ones,” Walt says. “We gotta switch.”
That’s when Dad swings the door open, banging his boots on the stoop.
“You comin’?” he says.
Walt hauls himself half out of his chair. This time he points his finger at Dad.
“Gotta move.” He’s almost shouting.
“Nobody’s moving.” Dad doesn’t seem surprised. They must have had this conversation before. “How d’ya think you’re getting off this property?” Dad says. “It’s a long ways east.”
Walt collapses into the chair.
“Fucking prick,” he says. But not too loudly. More like he’s saying it to himself than to Dad.
I pull on my boots and get ready to haul some plants.
“Does he really have other property?” I ask Dad, once we’re away from the walls. “Does he own it, or just know about it?”
Dad grunts. “Never been there.”
Communication skills run in our genes, obviously.
The plants are big enough that it’s not easy hauling them up and through the trees. Branches reach for me like live things and I’m soon covered in dirt and bits of fern and leaf. Dad is hauling as many as he can, but he’ll pay for it tomorrow. I try to outpace him, and I leave him the sunny spots closest to the clearing while I search for those farther away.
Eventually we take a water break, both of us panting. Dad has sword fern in his hair. He looks half-sasquatch.
“You ever think about retiring?” I ask as he lowers himself to the ground beside me. He moves like an old man.
“Retire from what?” he says.
I wave my hand at the clearing.
“You must have some money put away. Do you need to keep doing this?”
Dad looks as if this has never occurred to him.
“We got people waiting for our crop,” he says.
“I didn’t mean right this minute,” I said. “But you could take a break. Have a look at Walt’s other property, maybe. Give your back a rest.”
Dad takes a long swig of water, wipes his mouth on his sleeve, and then stares at the half-emptied clearing.
“You planning on going somewhere?” he asks.
For a long time, I stare straight ahead, too. It would be so easy to end this conversation right here and pretend it never happened.
“Art school,” I manage finally. It comes out sounding like a question.
Slowly, Dad turns his head toward me. He looks as if I may be an imposter. Or an alien.
“What the hell are you going to do with art school?”
And I have no idea what to say, because I’ve never once thought beyond the part where I go away.
“Dumb idea, I guess,” I mumble.
“Damn right,” Dad says.
/> I get up pretty quickly after that, and go back to the plants. Dad sits in the dirt and watches me haul the first one into the trees. When I return to collect another, he’s disappeared.
There’s a dull, steady pain beneath my ribs.
•
A bell should sound as I set down my pen down after Monday’s history exam. That’s the last one. I go straight from the gym to the office, where I cough up the money for two tickets to the graduation dance. It feels like buying tickets to my own waterboarding, but whatever.
“Don’t run away too quick,” the secretary says as she hands me the tickets. “Mr. Pires wants to see you.”
I deliver the dance tickets to Sam and leave her squealing happily, our Burger Barn argument forgotten. Then I head for the art room.
As soon as Mr. Pires looks up at me, I know. I almost turn and walk straight back out of the room.
“I heard from my contact at Emily Carr,” he says, handing me a copy of an email.
…potential…unique point of view…unfortunately…waitlists…bureaucracy…following year.
I shove the paper into my back pocket.
“It was a long shot.” Maybe my voice is a little flat, but I hold it together.
“I don’t want this to discourage you,” Mr. Pires said. “There are other great programs out there, and there’s always next year.”
“Sure.”
I’m one of those massive granite boulders that hulks among the trees, left over from a previous ice age. I’m stone.
And I want out of the art room so badly I could singlehandedly shift tectonic plates.
“Thanks for trying. I’ve got to go. I’m supposed to meet someone — ”
“Come by anytime,” Mr. Pires calls after me. “We’ll figure out a plan.”
But I’m already gone.
Walking through the halls, I can feel my edges crumbling. Chunks are falling from me. I focus on getting to the foyer, getting to Sam and getting out of here. We’ll climb into my truck and we’ll park beside the lake somewhere and I’ll stare at the waves until my chest stops feeling like it’s going to implode and —
“Zac! Are you ready?”
She’s standing with a group of her friends. They wave at me like a team of synchronized swimmers.
“I told them we’re going up the lake and now everyone wants to come. It’s a party.” She smiles, as if this is a good thing.
The chasm widens beneath my rib cage.
“I’ll drive up with you, then catch a ride back to town with the girls,” she says.
I’m silent all the way to the truck, but she doesn’t seem to notice. It’s only once we’re pulling onto Canyon Street and she’s finished waving through the rear window at her carful of followers that she puts a hand on my shoulder.
“You okay?”
I don’t want to talk about it now. Not with the girls behind us honking at each red light, their car practically bouncing with their energy.
I shore up whatever edges I have left. “Fine. Just tired.”
“I know,” Sam says. “I had the most exhausting day, too.”
I don’t hear the rest of her story. I nod when she pauses, and that seems to be enough.
As soon as we arrive at the lake, she breaks out a water bottle full of mixed booze, stolen from her dad’s supplies. She passes it around.
“He doesn’t notice when you do this?” one of the girls asks. “My dad marks the level on his bottles.”
Sam rolls her eyes.
When the bottle passes my way, I take a swig. It tastes like lava, but it helps a little. Then I sit on the beach and watch the girls swim, wishing I had Sam to myself.
I think back to the morning I met her in the auditorium, after she lipsticked my locker. She had a spotlight personality, she said then.
At the time, I didn’t recognize the implications.
13
The junior band squeaks and honks its way through a series of ceremonial marches.
Judith insisted I attend tonight. There would be only one high-school graduation in my entire life, she said. If I didn’t go, I might regret it for decades. After all the work I’d put in, I deserved a moment of celebration.
So here I am.
Apparently there’s been an epic graduation scene on some TV show this week. Around me, everyone’s whispering about it. I grin as if I love the show, too, but I have no idea what they’re talking about. It’s a relief when our line inches forward.
I spot Sam in the audience. Judith has to work, which is ridiculous after all the effort she put into getting me here. Still, I shuffle after Lucas, trying not to swish my robe too much. Then I march across the stage.
It doesn’t feel like Judith said it would. When the principal puts the diploma in my hand, it’s the same as when Mr. Pires handed me the art school email.
I join the line of students on the benches at the other side of the stage. When Lucas gets there, he’s blinking fast. Maybe it felt like it was supposed to, for him.
After the ceremony, his dad, tall and thin in a stylish black suit, shakes his hand.
“It’s a start, I’ll say that,” he says.
I want to punch him.
Lucas’s mom looks like a plump chocolate-chip cookie in her shiny polka-dotted dress. She wraps her arms around him.
“You did it,” she says.
Lucas smiles — the broadest, most sincere smile I’ve ever seen. I think of Sam’s description of the prison doors swinging open, and I can imagine Lucas diving for those doors.
Then, suddenly, my dad’s shaking my hand, too.
“What the…”
And Mom’s wrapping her arms around me, squeezing tight.
“What are you doing here?”
In her cotton Sunday dress, she looks hopelessly old-fashioned. Dad wears dress pants and a buttoned shirt I’ve never seen before.
“Judith arranged it.” Mom sniffs. Even Dad looks a little bleary-eyed. And before I know it, I’m all watery, too.
And confused.
“Where’s Walt?”
“Judith’s staying with him for the evening.”
That’s what almost tips me over the edge. I have to turn away, squeeze my eyes shut and take a deep breath before I regain control.
Lucas’s dad turns toward us and congratulates me. There are introductions. Lucas’s parents shake the hands of mine, and our moms somehow discover, in their first three sentences, that they both love to garden. They exchange tips on a parasitic fly.
I’ve stepped into a parallel universe.
Lucas’s family has dinner reservations. As they leave, I stare at my parents, wondering what I’m supposed to do with them.
“We have Judith’s car and she left us dinner at her place,” Mom says.
I don’t know what I’ll do first when I see my sister. Kiss her, or kill her.
No wonder she said I had to be here. She’d already planned the whole thing.
“I believe she’s arranged for your friend Sam to join us.”
I may kill her.
But Mom looks so happy. She’s glowing. Even Dad is puffed up like a partridge.
“Did you get a haircut?” I ask incredulously.
He grunts, while steering Mom out of the gym.
As soon as we push open the door of Judith’s bus, a waft of lasagna greets us. There’s a small foil pan in the toaster oven, with a loaf of bread and a huge bowl of salad on the counter beside it. She’s draped the table in a white cloth and folded origami napkins atop four white plates. A bottle of red wine serves as the centerpiece.
When Sam arrives and Dad opens the door for her, his brows shoot up. But she’s fairly conservatively dressed, for Sam. She’s wearing a strapless green-and-white checked dress with a thin green streak in her hair to match.
&
nbsp; She introduces herself and shakes their hands. She compliments Mom’s necklace.
For a brief moment, I think everything’s going to be okay.
Then, as soon as Dad finishes grace and we fill our plates, she starts talking about my art.
“He does the most amazing paintings I’ve ever seen.”
“He’s been drawing since he could hold a pencil,” Mom says. “When he was a toddler, his granddad taught him how to draw people, and he was off. He skipped right over the stick-figure stage.”
I have no memory of this, obviously, and I find it difficult to imagine Walt teaching a toddler to draw. Besides, I’d rather not talk about art at the moment. Or ever.
Dad scoops another serving of salad and we both bend our heads over our plates.
“Speaking of paintings,” Sam says, as if we were all doing so. “I made you a present.”
She pops up, reaches into her bag and pulls out a wrapped rectangle.
I open it reluctantly. It could be a picture of the two of us. Or something else that will prove embarrassing to open in front of my parents.
But it’s not.
It’s a small hardcover book. The front is a glossy reproduction of one of my forest paintings. Inside, page after page is filled with my work.
It looks real. It looks like an art book you might find in a store.
I turn it over in my hands. “How did you do this?”
“I begged Mr. Pires to give me the files,” she says. “I practically had to sign in blood to convince him I would use them for this and only this. I ordered it online.”
There’s a photo of me on the back flap, one that Sam snapped on her phone at the viewpoint.
“Thank you,” I manage. “This is the nicest thing…”
“I knew you’d love it!” she squeals. “And I wanted to make sure my gift was the best.”
Which is entirely, undeniably Sam. But at this moment, I can only grin at her.
Mom reaches for the book and slowly turns the pages.
“They’re wonderful,” she says after a few minutes. “When did you paint all of these?”
“You haven’t seen them?” Sam says incredulously.
Mom passes the book to Dad. When he doesn’t take it, she sets it on the tablecloth near his arm.
Prince of Pot Page 12