“What are you looking for?” Iris asked.
“Privacy?” I answered. “My own room?”
Iris shrugged and made a face.
“Do you know what I wish?” he texted.
“What do you wish?”
“I wish you were here right now.”
“Why? Would you kiss me again?”
I felt like a bundle of nerve endings. Thinking about his arms around me, wanting more. What if he said no?
“Maybe. I’ve been thinking about that moment ever since.”
“You seem surprised.”
I waited for him to reply.
“I don’t always like to be touched.” It probably was hard for him to say this.
“Well, I’ve been thinking about this,” I texted. “Since we are both in uncharted territory, we could experiment with touching. See what works and what doesn’t.”
“Create a series of successful subroutines?” he asked.
“I love it when you speak computationally,” I texted. “It makes me want to slap on a lab coat and get to work.”
Abelard didn’t text me back.
“Abelard?”
“I’m sorry,” he texted. “I was distracted by the thought of you wearing only a white lab coat. I believe it is possible that you are the best girlfriend in the history of girlfriends.”
“I do my best.” My best. It’s not often that I get to say these words.
Chapter 20
Monday night, I got home well before Iris. Only two and a half more hours until seven, and Abelard. I felt happy enough to make dinner, even though it wasn’t my night to cook. I’d already made a salad and was busy sautéing asparagus and red peppers for a frittata when Iris arrived.
She had the mail.
“Did you see?” she said. “Report cards are in.”
“Terrific,” I said with as much sarcasm as I could possibly manage. The arrival of the report cards was just another excuse for Iris to gloat.
I assumed that I’d failed two, maybe three classes. I wasn’t looking forward to the inevitable confrontation with Mom, but it was all part of my master plan now. Soon I’d be making my case for living with Dad. Screw your courage to the sticking-place.
Mom arrived just as I turned the oven on and began to beat the eggs.
“Report cards!” Iris said, handing Mom the letters.
Mom ripped open the first one, Iris’s no doubt.
“Nicely done,” Mom said quietly. She didn’t want to make a big deal over Iris’s success. She didn’t want to make me feel bad, but I was sure at some secret private moment later, she would do cartwheels over Iris’s report card.
I didn’t feel bad. I felt done with school, which wasn’t bad at all. Anxious, but not bad.
Iris retreated to our room.
Mom opened my report card. She stared at the paper for a long moment.
I put the frittata in the oven.
“Well,” she said finally. A big, sad, slow sigh, which is the worst thing in the world, worse than screaming or hair-pulling or any imaginable histrionics. The sad slow sigh is a sign of utter defeat.
“I thought you promised to talk to Mr. Neuwirth about your Populations in Peril Project,” she said.
I turned and leaned against the sink, arms folded across my chest. “I did. He said tough shit.”
“Lily! Language. I’m sure that’s not what Coach Neuwirth said.”
I took a calming breath. Count to four. Use your words, Lily. “Okay, he said that I didn’t follow the instructions. He said if he let me slide on the rubric, I would never learn to function in ‘the adult world.’ Whatever that is.”
I expected an argument from Mom, a defense of all things paperworkish and adultly, but instead: silence. I felt the weight of her sadness settle over my chest. Really, failing things was not so bad, because grades, as Coach Neuwirth had amply proven, were arbitrary. But disappointing people who love you is the worst.
“So what now, Lily? You’ve failed geography and chemistry, and you barely scraped by in algebra. What should we do about this?”
I took a deep breath. It was time to jump in and make my case.
“What if I went to live with Dad for a while? He could homeschool me, or I could take a GED.”
Mom laughed. It was a short, bitter bark of a laugh, but it told me—everything. It was a sound of such force and unintentional honesty, that it brought Iris back to the kitchen. She stood in the door frame of the kitchen looking like a sailor of yore, heading into a heavy blow. Ready to batten the hatches, whatever the hell that means. I felt a momentary stab of loss for the carefree albeit busy girl Iris had been when Dad left. The divorce was the genesis of Iris’s career in urban planning and disaster management. She’d been cleaning up in the wake of Hurricane Lily ever since. Couldn’t have been easy.
“You told me that if I got good grades, you’d let me see Dad this summer.”
“But you didn’t get good grades, did you?” Mom spat back.
“Mom!” Iris said. “Tone of voice.”
Too late. Mom had promised to let me go to Portland on the condition that I fulfill the impossible quest—all the while knowing I would never in a million years do well in my classes. She knew she’d never have to make good on sending me to Portland. The monster welled up inside me.
“Fuck this,” I said.
I pushed past Iris and charged out the front door.
I walked down the sidewalk of our crappy duplex avenue, past rows of trapezoidal seventies houses. I stepped on a chinaberry and was made suddenly, painfully aware that I didn’t have shoes on. I reached into my pocket. At least I had my phone.
“You’re not wearing shoes,” Rosalind said through the window of her car.
“My departure was hastily planned,” I replied.
“Do you want to go home and get shoes?”
I opened the door and got in the passenger’s side.
“No. I’m not going back there.”
“Ever? That might prove problematic.”
Rosalind drove in the direction of her parents’ house in Zilker Hills.
“So what happened?” she asked after a pause.
“Report cards came out,” I said, arms folded across my chest.
“Ah,” Rosalind replied. “Call your mom. Tell her you’re with me.”
This was not the first time I’d called Rosalind and asked her to pick me up from—wherever. This was not my first bad report card either. Rosalind knew the drill.
“I’ll send her a text.”
I had dinner with Rosalind’s parents, black quinoa salad in front of the TV, some British comedy on Netflix about a foul-tempered bookstore owner who drinks massive amounts of red wine with two friends who have nothing better to do. Funnier than it sounds.
Rosalind’s parents didn’t say anything about my bare feet. They’re nice like that.
At seven, Abelard texted.
“Lily?”
“Abelard. I’m not at home. Kind of distracted.”
“You kids today, and your texting,” Rosalind’s dad said over the edge of his laptop. Pretty meta, Rosalind’s dad. You never know whether he’s being ironic or not.
“Where are you?”
“My friend Rosalind’s house.”
“Who are you texting, Lily?” Rosalind’s mother asked.
“Lily has a boyfriend,” Rosalind said quickly. “They text every night.”
Rosalind was clearly trying to introduce the boyfriend idea by proxy, but her mother wasn’t getting it.
“Oh, that’s nice, Lily,” Rosalind’s mom said. “What’s he like?”
“Make that a lot distracted,” I texted.
Rosalind whipped out her phone and scrolled to Richard’s sketch of Abelard. She handed it to her mother. Rosalind’s mother pored over the picture with a frown. I hoped she didn’t read the comment thread.
“Your boyfriend is quite handsome,” Rosalind’s mother said.
“Come to the robotics
lab at lunch,” Abelard texted.
“The artist is amazing, don’t you think?” Rosalind leaned over her phone.
I couldn’t think. I took my phone and went through the sliding glass door to the flagstone patio.
“I failed a bunch of classes. My mom isn’t going to let me go to Portland. I’m thinking of running away.”
I inhaled deeply. A gust of wind rustled through the live oaks. The air smelled like impending rain.
“I’ll go with you.”
I stared at the screen, not quite sure I believed the words.
“Are you sure?”
“I want to be where you are. Nothing else matters.”
But other things did matter.
“We’ll take the train,” he said.
“Sounds expensive.”
“I have some money saved. My grandparents send me a thousand dollars every birthday and Christmas. I never spend it.”
My grandparents are not thousand-dollar grandparents by a long shot. I wondered when Abelard’s grandparents started sending him a thousand dollars. Can you send a four-year-old that kind of money? A ten-year-old?
“Isn’t that your college fund?”
“No.”
“Okay. So we will go to Portland together. On the train.”
“Yes.”
A strange and unfamiliar feeling filled me. I had a plan—and a future. With my boyfriend. Happiness.
Rosalind dropped me back home around ten. Mom was working at the dining room table. I steeled myself for another round of conflict about my wildly unimportant grades.
Mom looked up from her work. “Come talk with me, Lily.”
I slumped into the chair across from her, arms folded.
“You know, I don’t remember telling you that you could visit your father this summer.”
“But you did, Mom! We were in the car driving home after I broke the wall. And then earlier—”
“Okay, if you say I did, I did.” Mom rubbed a hand over her eyes and left a little clump of mascara on her cheek. I longed to reach over and wipe it off.
“We can see about a visit, but you can’t go live with your dad. I don’t think he can take care of you. He can barely take care of himself, and it’s just not—”
“I can take care of myself,” I said quickly.
“You’re sixteen! You can’t take care of yourself, honey.”
A lump formed in my throat. I understood—finally. She was keeping me from my dad because she didn’t want me to end up like him—picking beets and milking goats, poor as dirt. Happy. Mom still held out hope of turning me into Iris, but it was too late for that. I’d never be like Iris.
“Well, that makes me just like Dad, doesn’t it?” I stood and pushed away from the table. “I should be living with him.”
“Lily, that doesn’t even make sense. Someone has to pay the bills and get you to school on time. You don’t even do your own laundry. Do you think your dad will—”
“Fuck you,” I said. Bitter angry tears rose in my eyes, but I wasn’t going to cry in front of her. “You never understood Dad. He’s not like you.”
“I don’t even know how to get in touch with your dad,” she said, but I wasn’t listening.
I went to my bed and put in earbuds and turned up the music too loud. It was too much. I was done. I’d find my dad if Abelard and I had to go farm to farm in Portland looking for him.
Chapter 21
I spent lunch hour in the robotics lab with Abelard. On the way, I passed the art wing. Richard’s study of feet was gone from the glass case. In its place was his finished portrait of Rosalind. Nice to know things were progressing.
At first, I thought Mr. Martini was going to say no.
“Preparing for regionals,” Mr. Martini said. “You understand, miss.”
Miss. He called me “miss,” like I’d wandered in off the street to sell something. I guessed this was what happened when you weren’t in AP Physics.
Abelard did not, however, understand. He stood at the door frowning.
“I asked my girlfriend to come to robotics,” Abelard said.
His girlfriend. I’d always hoped that I would find someone to love before I left high school. I just never expected to find someone who would admit to it in public, and even seem sort of proud of the fact.
Abelard.
“She’en been spreefed on safety protocols,” Mr. Martini said.
Safety protocols. That was what Mr. Martini said the last time I was there. I had no idea. Briefed on safety protocols.
“I asked my girlfriend to come to robotics,” Abelard repeated. He shook his head lightly and frowned, a look of absolute stubbornness on his beautiful face. I had the feeling he wasn’t going to move until Mr. Martini gave in.
Mr. Martini shrugged and walked to the cabinet and returned with a sheet of paper and a pair of safety goggles.
“Read this carefully and shine at the bobbin,” Mr. Martini said. “And don’t touch anything.”
I nodded vigorously. I didn’t read carefully, because careful reading is not my thing. I just decided I wouldn’t touch anything. The last thing I wanted to do was to mess up the communal robot. And so I watched while Abelard, two guys I didn’t know, and a nerd girl named Eva adjusted actuators and tried to get the robot to play a better hole of mini golf. I kept my hands to myself. Which was hard.
Mom returned home early from work. It was her night to cook, but she’d brought home a sack of something.
“What’s in the bag?” Iris looked up from the dining room table. She was hard at work editing her Cornell Notes for biology. Cornell Notes, the cult of synthesizing information through keywords and questions, written in well-defined margins. Teachers at LAMEA worship at the altar of Cornell.
“Tacos from Torchy’s,” Mom replied cheerily. “Fried avocado for you, Iris, and for you, Lily, Baja shrimp. And street corn.”
Mom deposited the bag on the dining room table and went for plates. Since Mom only took me for tacos after my appointments with Humberto, I took it as a sign. She’d made an appointment with Humberto.
“Did you talk to Humberto?” I asked.
Mom turned.
“Humberto?” She looked confused. “No, honey, I thought I told you. We maxed out our insurance splog yearly scrits you can have with Humberto scrubble.”
“What?” Something about her face filled me with alarm. She had an expression both wary and hopeful. I didn’t know what the hell she was talking about, but I didn’t have to. I sensed a plan.
“You know, Lily, since I work in medical billing, I run into a lot of people in the profession. And I happened to meet a nice doctor who works in my complex, and—”
“I’m not going to another doctor.” I folded my arms across my chest and leaned against the drainboard. “I’m not taking any more drugs.”
“Maybe we should talk about this later.” Mom tilted her head toward Iris. My alarm grew. Things not to be spoken of in the proximity of Iris are generally messed-up things, like suicide watch and detention specifications.
“Iris isn’t even listening,” I said.
Of course, this wasn’t true. Iris had her head down in her Cornell Notes, pretending to pose thought-provoking questions about the Krebs cycle in the margin, but even I could see that her pen wasn’t really moving. Iris was totally listening.
“Okay, Lily. He’s not another neurologist. He’s a surgeon.”
Iris looked up in surprise. I met her eyes, glad to have a witness to this most recent bout of insanity.
“A surgeon?” I laughed. “Like he’s going to open up my skull and take parts of my brain out? Are you going to lobotomize me, Mom?”
“It’s not a lobotomy, honey,” she said, deadly serious. “It’s more like an electrode implantation. It’s very minor.”
“Ah—minor brain surgery.” I pushed past Mom and flopped down on the living room couch, which was more of a crap-ass love seat, and covered my eyes with my hands.
Mom fo
llowed me.
“You don’t have to have the surgery,” she said. “We could just go talk to the doctor and see what you think. He’s very engaging. I think you’ll like him.”
Anger welled up, so sharp and bitter I thought I might heave. My hand absently searched the coffee table and found a canister full of Iris’s colored pencils. My hand longed to hurl the canister, but some part of my brain said no. No, no, no. It was time to say no to everything. I put the pencils down.
“No,” I replied. “Not in a million years.”
“Lily, is there anything I can do to convince you to just go talk to the doctor? He’s been having a lot of success with ADHD patients. The surgery is safe. He’s even doing it on younger kids.”
I sat on the couch fuming, sick at heart. My mother didn’t like me the way I was. Hardly new information, but somehow it hurt every time she found a new doctor to “cure” me. Every new drug, every new life coach, every neurologist was a reminder that to Mom, I was broken. Broken. A fractal, a complexity.
But Abelard didn’t think I was broken.
Abelard.
Bells and whistles.
There was something Mom could do for me. It was so simple. I’d been avoiding the question of how I would tell Mom about my trip to Portland with Abelard. I couldn’t just run away. And now, here was my moment.
“You want me to see this doctor?” I pulled my hand away from my eyes to look at her. “Let me go visit my father this summer with Abelard. Then I’ll talk to your surgeon.”
Mom frowned in slow motion. Her eyes glittered. I could see she was performing some sort of mental calculus. And then she stood—subject to be tabled for discussion later. Good. At least I’d told her about Abelard and Portland.
We ate tacos in silence.
Seven that night. Abelard wanted to know what I thought of robotics. Which was good. I didn’t want to talk about my mother or the surgeon.
“Honestly? Jealous. I want to build robots to do my bidding.”
“I wish this one would do my bidding. Our kill ratio is still too low,” Abelard replied.
The Love Letters of Abelard and Lily Page 12