Are We There Yet?

by Kathleen West

  So when they’d had that sub in PE, a guy who seemed like he was about two seconds out of college and super into being “cool,” everyone had already posted tons of Tane pics. Apparently, Sadie wasn’t the only one who’d noticed Tane’s new middle school look, and yet she felt like she’d gotten in on the ground floor of the Tane craze. The two had been friends since the first day of Quiz Bowl practice. She already had Tane’s number saved on her phone, had already friended him on Insta and Snapchat.

  The PE sub randomly assigned teams—Sadie and Tane on one side and Teddy on the other. Once the game began, Teddy was everywhere, sprinting on the baseline, barking orders. “Move it!” he shouted, and “Block already!”

  It’s just a game, Sadie felt like telling him, and she might have had a chance if Teddy ever stopped sprinting long enough to make eye contact with her. But instead, it was like Sadie wasn’t even there. At junior high orientation in August, Teddy had glommed onto her, nervous and clingy. But in dodgeball Teddy was aggressive and relentless, the same version of himself who’d called Tane a “douchebucket” in front of Sadie’s mom.

  Unlike Teddy, Tane was laughing during the dodgeball game. He lobbed soft shots at kids who weren’t paying attention. Easy outs. “Stay behind me, Sadie!” Tane offered when about half of the kids were sidelined. “I’ll block for you.” Sadie felt her chest swell beneath the band of her new seventh-grade bra. She smiled at Mikaela, who’d overheard. Despite Tane’s protection, McCoy Blumenfeld whipped a yellow ball at Sadie’s calf. The hit stung and would definitely leave a mark. “Jerk,” Sadie whispered under her breath as she left the floor.

  “You gotta move that ass,” McCoy said. Sadie instinctively glanced at her behind. She’d noticed her skating skirt hanging a little shorter than it had the previous year. She’d hoped her mother might just buy a new size without them talking about her “growing body.” When she looked back at McCoy, he was laughing with Teddy. The two exchanged a fist bump and scanned their remaining competition.

  “You okay?” Tane called after her. His concern had softened her embarrassment. She gave a thumbs-up over her shoulder as she sat down. At least if she was sitting, no one could look at her ass.

  The game went on for a few minutes, and Mikaela and Chloe joined Sadie on the sidelines. Eventually, the teams were down to two members each, and then, as if in a teen movie, Teddy and Tane were the final two facing off for the win.

  “Team Tane! Team Tane!” Mikaela and Chloe chanted, echoing the Snapchat hashtag. Sadie whipped her head toward Teddy to gauge his reaction. He frowned and stalked his baseline. Sadie glanced at the clock and hoped the bell might ring, ending the game early. Teddy slapped the ball he held against his free hand. Tane stood still, a goofy smile on his face, a green ball balanced between his palms. After several awkward seconds, Tane let it fly, a medium-strength shot at Teddy’s waistline.

  Teddy probably could have caught it and eliminated Tane if he’d just dropped his own ball, but he didn’t. Instead he jumped to his left. “That’s all you got, Lagerhead?” he taunted.

  “Team Tane! Team Tane!” repeated Chloe and Mikaela and a few others. Sadie’s mouth felt dry. She wondered if the substitute teacher would stop things, but he was scrolling on his phone near the entrance to the locker room.

  Tane bent to gather three dodgeballs in his long arms. Get him, thought Sadie. Any guilt she might have felt about rooting against her oldest friend was overpowered by the shame of McCoy’s comment about her butt. Teddy hadn’t even reacted.

  Ten seconds later, Tane did get him. A couple of balls collided in midair first, and then Tane hurled the other two he held. Teddy almost avoided them both with an agile lunge to the right, but Tane’s second shot clipped the heel of his sneaker. It rebounded into the air, and the whole class erupted in cheers. Even McCoy got caught up in Tane fever, raising a fist before he remembered whose side he was on.

  By afternoon car pool, there had been a couple of Snapchat and Instagram stories about Tane’s so-called cheating. “#TeamTeddy,” those said. But they were only from McCoy and Landon. Everyone else had gone back to #TeamTane. He’d won the game, after all.

  “Where’s your Snapchat story?” Teddy had asked Sadie as they waited for Teddy’s mom to pick them up.

  “Don’t mention Snapchat in the car,” Sadie had said. Her mother still didn’t know she had it, and she didn’t want Alice to know, either. She had buried the app in a folder she’d labeled “Educational” on her iPhone. On the first page in that folder, she had nine icons, programs she’d collected over the last year. They were mom-approved apps that had to do with math facts, or the principles of Euclidian geometry. So far, Sadie’s mom hadn’t flicked past them to the second screen.

  In the car, Teddy hadn’t mentioned Snapchat. In fact, they hadn’t really talked at all, that afternoon or any time since the game. Sadie imagined him driving home in a similar silence today while she and Tane leaned together over a math problem in Sadler’s class.

  Evelyn Brown

  Evelyn hoped she’d have a few minutes to talk to her daughter when she arrived, but Alice already had her keys in hand. “I have to go,” she said as they hugged. Alice kept her arms bent, resisting a full embrace. “I missed an important meeting this morning with the Kerrigans.”

  “Like the governor?” Evelyn lingered in the hug, even though she could feel Alice’s reticence. Evelyn knew Alice’s business had been doing well, but Governor Kerrigan would be next level for sure.

  “Her daughter. But I had to cancel this morning because . . .” She pointed up the stairs toward Teddy’s bedroom and frowned. “Anyway.” She disappeared into the mudroom and Evelyn heard the garage door lift. “I’ll be back.”

  Evelyn pulled her Haflingers from her backpack. One of her favorite things about fall was breaking out the wool clogs. As a teenager, Alice had been horrified when Evelyn wore them out of the house.

  “Teddy?” She ascended the stairs toward the bedrooms and knocked lightly at his door. When she heard an affirmative-sounding grunt, Evelyn pulled it open. He lay on his back, his sneakers still on, and stared at the ceiling.

  “Nana, I just can’t talk about it.” Teddy dropped his palms over his eyes. Evelyn scanned his long legs, his too-big feet. Alice was right: This kid wasn’t the three-year-old Evelyn held in her mind’s eye. Still, teens were her bread and butter. In fact, she consulted regularly with the counselor at Elm Creek Junior High, a capable woman who’d been her graduate student ten or fifteen years before.

  “You could try me.” Evelyn had reams of files documenting her therapeutic successes. Her open tone and neutral body language were magic, at least with other people’s children and grandchildren. Armed with her track record, she’d planned to be the kind of mom that her own teenaged daughter would confide in—one of those best-friend-with-boundaries types—but that was never how things developed with Alice. She wondered if her own secrets precluded Alice’s confidences, the space other mothers held for their daughters’ confessions already clogged with a lifetime of her own omissions.

  “Believe it or not,” Evelyn forged on, resolutely hopeful with Teddy, “I still know a ton about junior high.” She knew enough, in fact, not to bring up her latest professional research on adjustment disorder in early teens. Not that she thought Teddy’s breach warranted that particular diagnosis.

  Teddy rolled over and smashed his face into his pillow. “No,” he said, and then, as she moved to leave, “Thanks.” She smiled at his perfunctory politeness. It was a good sign.

  “You know,” she said, “there’s nothing you could do that would make me stop loving you.” She paused, but he didn’t respond. She tried again in the car when they picked up Adrian, but Teddy rested his head against the window and said he was tired. Evelyn reminded herself to be patient. It usually took several invitations for kids to finally open up, and she would undoubtedly be back at Alice’s to help withi
n the next few days.

  When Alice got home, Evelyn had already thrown together a quick dinner of leftovers from the Sullivans’ fridge. Teddy shoved rotisserie chicken into his mouth with his fingers, his expression dull. Adrian chattered on obliviously about her collection of Calico Critters. The kids eventually excused themselves, and Alice offered Evelyn a glass of wine. “Patrick got stuck at work.” She sounded apologetic, though this situation was routine. Evelyn nodded yes to the wine. While her marriage to Frank had been toxic in its own way, she often wondered how Patrick’s work schedule impacted the kids. And Alice.

  “What am I going to do with Teddy at home for a week?” Alice asked.

  Evelyn studied her daughter’s face, her deep brown eyes so different from her own. She wondered how much of her professional opinion she should offer. “You could use the opportunity to talk,” she ventured.

  “Right, yeah. But what about my job?” Alice tipped her wineglass up, nearly draining it on her first sip. “It’s not as if I can take an unexpected vacation until next Thursday when they let him back into school. I just started working on the Kerrigan project today.”

  Alice pushed her black hair back from her face, and Evelyn glanced at her wrist, looking for her ubiquitous hair tie. Alice gathered her shoulder-length waves into a high ponytail, a style Evelyn had been sure she’d grow out of. “Can you work from home?” Evelyn asked. “Or is that not the best move for big new clients?” She’d help, obviously, but Teddy probably needed his mother. And his father. But Evelyn couldn’t remember Patrick ever taking a day off.

  “Maybe I could work from home at least half days?” And then Alice blurted, “Do you think I’m too checked out? Like as a mom? I mean, today I found out Adrian can’t read and also that Teddy’s a sociopath, and I had no idea.”

  Evelyn couldn’t help but smile. “Neither of those things is true.” They weren’t. Evelyn was one hundred percent certain.

  Alice put her head on the table next to her empty wineglass. “I just didn’t realize how deficient I’ve been. I feel like I’ve been trying really hard.”

  Evelyn seized on this moment of vulnerability and rubbed her daughter’s back, her heart aching. She realized that while she was anxious to share her big update, Alice couldn’t process one more thing in the midst of the current crisis. “You’re trying your best.” She felt her daughter stiffen beneath her hand, probably reading that assessment as a rebuke. “You’re a great mom,” she added.

  “There are some meetings I can’t cancel tomorrow.” Alice propped herself up on her elbows.

  “I can be here in the morning,” Evelyn said. “And after your meetings, maybe you can research a tutor for Adrian? And also”—she hoped her daughter would take this the right way—“a therapist for Teddy?” Evelyn braced herself.

  “A therapist?” Alice said. “Really?” She reached for the wine bottle and poured another half glass.

  Evelyn shrugged. “Might as well head off whatever is causing this behavioral blip.”

  “You think it’s a blip?” Alice looked hopeful despite the dusky circles beneath her eyes, her concealer worn off.

  “Without a doubt.” Evelyn patted her back. “You can use this week as an excuse to reset and get some new procedures in order.” Evelyn braced herself, hoping the suggestion wouldn’t seem like a criticism, but Alice looked suddenly brighter.

  “Yeah,” she said. “Maybe that’s the way to spin it, as an opportunity.” She straightened up, and Evelyn dropped her hand back in her lap. She had always admired Alice’s gumption, the way she powered through problems and obstacles as if they’d eventually dissipate if she just pushed hard enough. Alice would make it through this rough patch as she had the others, and when it was over, she would be ready to process Evelyn’s life-changing news.

  Sadie Yoshida

  Sadie had planned her request perfectly. Chloe’s party was an even bigger deal now that Teddy had been suspended. Everyone else would be there talking about the assembly. It, and the aftermath, would become one of those classic seventh-grade moments. Of course, no matter when she asked her mother, her chances were hurt by the failed science test. If only Mr. Robinson had waited to report the grade until after she’d already gotten permission, then maybe she could have convinced her mother to let her “follow through on her obligation” to go to the party.

  As it was, getting a green light for both the football game and then Chloe’s? With boys? Sadie estimated her chances at about fifty percent. Still, she had to try.

  In the car on the way home from skating practice, she started to build her case. “I talked to Mr. Robinson during study hall,” she said.

  “Oh great.” Meredith swiveled her head at the intersection outside the ice rink. She told Sadie at least twice per week about the frequency of accidents here “because people just don’t pay attention.” Sadie’s mom checked two or three more times before she left the stop sign.

  When they’d made the turn, Sadie started again. “Yeah. Mr. Robinson said since it’s the first time I’ve had a bad grade, he’d be happy to let me do a retake.”

  “Excellent!” Her mom lifted one hand from her steering wheel and raised it in a fist. Sadie’s skating tights felt hot inside the joggers she’d pulled on after practice. “When are you going to take it? And did he say what the max score could be?”

  “What do you mean?” Their Grand Cherokee cruised past Teddy’s street and then past Elm Creek Park, where Sadie spotted bright pink paint on the garbage can near the playground, two circles and a thick shaft. OMG. She hoped her mom hadn’t seen it.

  “Like, will Mr. Robinson average what you get with the fifty-six? Or can you just replace the score? Because even if you got a hundred on the retake, if you had to average them, that would still be a C.”

  “Oh.” In sixth grade, they hadn’t really talked about grades so much. Sure, Sadie knew ninety percent was better than seventy-five, but it wasn’t until she got her first set of junior high midterms that she heard the term “GPA.”

  “We’ve got to start thinking about this,” her mom had said over dinner that night as her dad had put on his reading glasses so he could see the grades on the portal. “How you do in this one class determines which science you get to take next year. It could impact your whole future. We want to make sure you have the maximum number of college choices.”

  College was six years away, though, and Chloe’s party was tomorrow. “Um,” Sadie ventured. “So, there’s a football game versus Liston Heights tomorrow?”

  “You have synchro, I think.” Sadie’s mom twirled her hair around her index finger. Her reddish brown waves bounced immediately back when she let the strands go. Sadie had inherited her dad’s Japanese hair—straight and black. Although her mother called it easy to manage, Sadie had noticed the depth of the crease between her mom’s eyebrows when she lacquered on hair spray to keep it in place for skating competitions. She’d heard her mom muttering to herself about “texture.”

  Sadie coughed and forced herself to take a breath. She didn’t want to seem too eager. “I checked, and practice ends at five fifteen, so I’d still have time to get there.” She looked at her feet, avoiding her mother’s eye contact in the rearview.

  “What about family game night?” her mom said. “You already missed one for the homecoming game.”

  “Mom.” Sadie rolled her eyes toward the passenger-side window. “I’m almost thirteen. Did you think we’d have Friday family game night all the way through high school?”

  Sadie startled as a car behind them honked. “Oh,” her mom said, waving into the rearview. “Green light.”

  Neither of them said anything for the minute it took to get from the intersection to the Yoshidas’ driveway. Last weekend before game night, Meredith and Sadie had decorated their “California ranch,” as her mom typically described their home, for Halloween, which was also the day after Sadie’s
birthday. Faux cobwebs stretched over the boxwoods under the living room picture window. It looked cool, Sadie thought, even though she was too old to trick or treat.

  Sadie tried once more as they pulled into the garage. “So, the football game? Can I go?”

  Meredith turned away from her, her running shoes thudding against the garage floor. “I don’t think so,” she said. “There’s the science test and our family tradition. Both of those things are more important, right?”

  Before Sadie could answer, her mom’s car door shut, and she disappeared inside.

  Evelyn Brown

  Call Julienne,” Evelyn commanded her Bluetooth as she pulled out of Alice’s driveway.

  “Calling Julie-Ann,” the speaker said, not quite getting the lovely lilt of the name. Four months ago, tears had streamed down Evelyn’s face as she spoke with the baby she’d last seen in the arms of a social worker forty-one years before. The emotion had surprised her. She’d read as many books and articles as she could find in professional journals about adoption and reunion, about the typical arc of these tenuous relationships. She felt prepared to speak to Julienne, and yet the reality of the moment overwhelmed her.

  Still, despite her tears, that first conversation had felt easy, effortless even. Later, when she reflected on it, Evelyn felt certain she and Julienne were soul mates of sorts, meant to find each other again. She allowed herself a few moments of outright regret—if only she’d understood at age nineteen what exactly she was sacrificing when she placed her firstborn with other parents—and then she put the feeling aside and made a plan to move forward. “Twice-weekly phone calls?” She suggested. “Lunch on Mondays?” As the months passed, these routines gave way to a more natural connection. She called Julienne when she felt like it.