by Beth Hautala
• • •
Charlie came to greet me at the gate, his cane tap-tap-tapping in front of him, and let me inside the zoo.
“Ethel got out again!” he said.
“I know,” I said, yawning.
Charlie’s mouth fell partly open. “Did she get all the way out?! She was out of her enclosure here inside the zoo, but the main gate was locked this morning!”
“That’s because I closed the padlock again once she was inside,” I said. “I probably should have brought her all the way into her own enclosure, but I was afraid someone would see me.”
Charlie let out a big breath.
I continued. “The chain and lock were just hanging on the fence, and the gate was wide open when we got here. Someone has to be letting her out. There’s no other way Ethel could escape her own enclosure and the zoo’s main gate. Right?”
Charlie nodded.
“What are we going to do?” I asked.
“I think we need to tell my mom, Olivia.”
“No! Please. Please don’t say anything, Charlie.” I grabbed his hand, as though just by hanging on to it I could keep him from doing anything. “I’ll be in so much trouble!”
“Why will you be in trouble? You’re not the one letting her out. Are you?”
“No, but she’s gotten out twice now, and both times she’s ended up in my backyard. Who on earth is going to believe it isn’t me?”
Charlie frowned a little and then sighed. “Okay. I won’t say anything for now. But if we don’t figure out how Ethel is getting out pretty soon, I’ll have to tell my mom.”
“I know,” I said. “Okay. Thanks.”
Charlie nodded.
“This is so crazy,” I said.
“Yeah. I had no idea things would be this interesting in tiny Prue, Oklahoma! I was totally prepared to be bored out of my mind this summer.”
“Well, things usually are pretty quiet around here.”
“Then I hold you responsible,” Charlie said. His whole face was smiling.
“I do try to take my responsibilities seriously,” I said. I was smiling, too. “Oh! And I made a map! Like you suggested. So we can start searching for my brother’s ostrich.”
“Oh . . . okay.” Charlie’s smile faded a little.
“What’s the matter?”
“I thought we were going to work on it together.”
“We are!” I cleared my throat. “I just couldn’t sleep last night. I wanted to get a head start on things.”
“So, you still want my help?”
“Yes! Definitely.”
“Okay. Awesome.” Charlie’s smile was back. “What does the map look like?”
“Well, I started with my house, right in the middle. And then I drew other places that my brother has gone. Like the library, and the park. I’m hoping if we go and visit those places and I think about his ostrich really hard, I’ll be able to remember some things, or notice details I might have missed before.”
Charlie tilted his head like he was thinking about that.
“So, all you have to do is think about a missing thing and it, like, shows up or something?”
“No.” I smiled. “But if I have a picture in my mind of the missing thing, and if I’m in the general place where that missing thing is, then clues become clearer somehow. I remember details—seeing something that reminds me of something else. Like this one time, I was looking for my dad’s missing keys, and I remembered that he usually sets them in the bowl by the front door. So, I started wondering if maybe he’d been distracted and put them in a different bowl somewhere else in the house. Sure enough, I found them in the fruit bowl in the kitchen.”
“Wow,” Charlie said.
“It also helps if I know the person who’s lost the thing I’m looking for. Like, I know my dad. Jacob is a little trickier because he’s autistic. Some things he does exactly the same way every time. I mean, he still gets dressed as soon as he wakes up every morning, just like he’s going to school, even though it’s summer. But then, other times he will do something totally out of the ordinary. It’s tough because he’s a little more unpredictable.”
Charlie nodded. “Okay. So, finding your brother’s missing ostrich will be as easy as being in the right place and remembering the right details, or as hard as guessing the direction of the wind next week?”
“Yeah,” I laughed. “Basically.”
Charlie shrugged nonchalantly. “We’ve totally got this.”
* * *
• • •
When we got home later that afternoon, Mom was in her office. I could hear she was on the phone. Her voice was serious and my stomach knotted. Charlie and I stood in the hall, listening for a minute. She was talking about Jacob, about scheduling a reevaluation. Finding Jacob’s ostrich suddenly felt even more impossible than guessing the direction of next week’s wind.
I knocked on the door lightly to let Mom know I was there, and waved hello before Charlie and I headed into the kitchen. But I couldn’t stop thinking about that article on Mom’s desk. Did she really think I was like Jacob—or could be like him eventually? Did she see him every time she looked at me? I swallowed, suddenly trying not to cry, and I stared at the pictures on the refrigerator. Pictures of family. Old holiday photo cards of friends. Lists of things Mom didn’t want to forget or things she needed to do. Magnets with quotes on them. “Coffee runs this house.” “Smile, happiness looks good on you.” “Do it today. Someday never comes.”
“Is everything okay?” Charlie’s voice sounded a little nervous, and I smiled and nodded before remembering he couldn’t see me do either.
“Yeah. I just realized I forgot to ask my mom if it was okay that you came over.”
“Oh! Do you think I should go?”
“No, it’s fine. I’ll just tell her when she’s off the phone.”
“Okay.”
“Are you hungry?”
Charlie nodded.
“I’ll make us some sandwiches. Here, you can sit down.” I led him, a little awkwardly, to the kitchen island, and he sat down on a stool while I rummaged around in the fridge. “Do you like peanut butter and jelly?”
“Yeah.”
“Good, because that’s pretty much all I know how to make,” I said.
Mom walked into the kitchen then. “Sorry about that, honey. Hi. Are you Charlie?”
Charlie nodded and smiled in the direction of my mom and shifted uncomfortably on his stool.
“It’s nice to meet you!” she said.
“It’s nice to meet you, too, Mrs. Grant,” he said. “Sorry I just kind of showed up—”
“Not at all. It’s good to meet one of Olivia’s new friends.”
“I forgot to ask if it was okay if he came over,” I said hurriedly. “You were gone or else I would have and—”
“It’s fine, Olivia.” She smiled, and I knew it was, but all of a sudden I wondered if forgetting to ask her about Charlie was something that belonged on my Neverdo List. What if a lot of things I hadn’t worried about before were the beginnings of autistic behaviors? I needed to be careful about everything.
“Who were you talking to on the phone?” I asked.
“Your brother’s therapist.” She gave a small smile. But this time her smile told me we were done talking about it. Especially in front of Charlie.
I didn’t ask anything more.
* * *
• • •
The first time Jacob was evaluated, a lady from the county came to our house. Her primary focus was on Jacob, but every now and then I felt like she was watching me, too. I did everything I could to make sure I was as normal as possible—as different from Jacob as I could possibly be, because I didn’t want her to look at me the way she looked at him.
Now I wondered if Mom had said something to her about
me—about the possibility of latent autism in siblings.
After that first visit, all the reports confirmed that Jacob was autistic and that he was somewhere near the middle of the spectrum. The psychologist suggested we might try changing some things to make it easier for Jacob, and we did. We changed the kinds of food we ate and didn’t eat, because some foods upset his system or made him react more emotionally. We changed the places we went and how we got there, because some environments made Jacob more prone to meltdowns, and because he had certain issues being in the car. But other things changed, too. The time we spent with therapists and doctors increased a lot those few months after.
The thought of having Jacob evaluated again, finding out more things, and changing more about our lives made me sick to my stomach.
“You want some milk, Olivia?”
“Oh, um, sure,” I said. “Thanks.”
Mom poured us some milk from the fridge, and I tried my best to bring my thoughts back into the kitchen.
Charlie told stories about the zoo while we ate. But I couldn’t shake the feeling that time was starting to press down on us, like a giant hand, squeezing hard.
In my head, I saw myself giving the toy ostrich to my brother once we’d found it and standing there, watching as he kind of woke up. I could see him holding it in both hands, staring at it for a minute. Then he’d recognize it and remember. And some part of his brain—the part that had shifted when he first lost that ostrich—would shift back. He would blink a few times and then look around at Dad and Mom and me.
“What happened?” he’d ask, and we would sit down and tell him. We’d cry a little, and hug each other, but in the end, my brother would be his old self, like before. Everything would be okay. And I would be okay, too. And no one would be lost anymore.
I was anxious to start searching.
Suddenly Jacob came into the kitchen. He’d been building with Legos in his room and had no idea Charlie was here until now.
“Jacob, this is Charlie,” Mom said, her voice calm. “Are you ready for some lunch?”
But Jacob was staring at Charlie. Jacob liked knowing things, and he hadn’t known there would be a strange boy in the kitchen before he came in for lunch.
Charlie shifted on his stool. Could he feel Jacob’s stare?
“Hey, Jacob,” Charlie said. “It’s nice to meet you.”
“It’s nice to meet you,” Jacob echoed. And he sat down on the stool next to Charlie as if he’d known him his whole life. “Did you know,” he asked, turning to Charlie, “that the world’s most expensive coffee is made from beans that have been partially digested by the Asian palm civet? They are also called toddy cats. They eat the coffee berries and then poop out the beans. Those beans are roasted and ground into coffee, and sold for as much as 450 dollars a pound.”
Charlie almost snorted milk through his nose. Mom started laughing, and then I was laughing, and Jacob was laughing, too, though I don’t think he really understood why.
“I didn’t know that, Jacob,” Charlie said once he’d caught his breath. “That is awesome!”
Jacob smiled and continued. “Did you also know the leaves of deciduous trees aren’t really green? The chlorophyll in the leaves acts as a kind of disguise all summer long while the trees are transforming sunlight into food. But in the fall, when all the sugar goes back into the tree’s roots, the colors left behind—red, gold, amber, citron, and saffron—are that tree’s actual colors.”
“Wow! I didn’t know that,” I said.
“Me neither,” said Charlie as he smiled and took a bite of his sandwich.
“Can you imagine being those bright colors all year long but having to keep it a secret so you could stay alive?” I really couldn’t.
Charlie shook his head. Jacob poked at his sandwich.
“Okay. My turn,” said Charlie. “Did you know that braille isn’t a language? It’s a tactile alphabet that can be used to write almost any language. There are braille versions of Chinese, Spanish, Arabic, Hebrew, and many other languages, too.”
“So cool!” I said.
“I knew that,” said Jacob.
Mom gave a small smile.
* * *
• • •
The rest of lunch went great. Jacob didn’t melt down over a single thing. He actually seemed more normal than he’d been in a while. Charlie seemed to have a way of knowing what people needed. Maybe he was good at reading people’s emotions because he couldn’t get distracted by their clothes or faces and stuff. He just heard what we were saying and how we were saying it, and voices are bad at disguising things.
Jacob was perceptive, too. He knew there was something different about Charlie right away, and when Charlie told him he was blind, neither of them were weird about it. They were just themselves. It was easy to be together, there in the kitchen. It wasn’t awkward or scary or weird at all. But maybe that’s what happens when people agree to let each other be just exactly who they are—no pretending.
* * *
• • •
After we finished lunch, Mom asked Charlie and me what we had planned for the afternoon.
“We’re working on a project,” I said hurriedly.
“What kind of project?”
“Well, it’s kind of a surprise. I don’t really want to talk about it yet,” I said.
Charlie looked confused about why we weren’t saying anything, but he just nodded in agreement. Jacob sat there quietly, breaking the crust on his plate into smaller and smaller pieces.
“A surprise project? Well, that sounds mysterious!” Mom looked amused. But I didn’t feel like smiling back. I didn’t want her to think it was silly, or a waste of time. I didn’t want her to say anything about it at all. It was too important.
I gave a small shrug.
“All right. Have fun, but don’t forget, we’ll need to leave for play practice by four thirty, okay?”
I’d kept the butterflies calm all day, but now they swirled around in my stomach again. Some of my excitement shifted to worry.
“Do you really think I can do this?”
Mom thought about it for a minute. “I do,” she said. “Part of being in a play is trusting the director to choose the right people for the right parts and to direct the best play ever. Right?”
“Yeah, I guess.”
“So, why don’t you trust Stephen and Dorothy to do their job, and you just focus on being the best Peter Pan you can be.”
I nodded and smiled. “Okay.”
“You’ll be great,” Charlie chimed in, and Mom nodded.
“You’ll be great!” Jacob echoed.
My smile faltered. I wanted to believe that. I wished I could wrap their encouraging words around myself like a blanket and stay there all warm and safe. But then I remembered latent autism. It crawled out of the corner of my mind and hung over me like an invisible sign. What if I was the farthest thing from great? What if I ended up having a meltdown of my own? Or ended up doing things that belonged on my Neverdo List?
I tried to push the thoughts away. For now, all I could do was my best, like Mom said.
I led Charlie to my room so we could put the finishing touches on our map and figure out where we should begin our new search. But I couldn’t stop thinking about what I needed to add to my list. It was hard, trying to decide if something even belonged on it or not. In my head, I listed everything I could think of so I wouldn’t forget to write them down as soon as Charlie left.
Neverdo List, Entry #2
Never forget to tell Mom when I’m bringing friends over.
Never slam my bedroom door.
Never get too nervous.
18
The Best Kid for the Job
AFTER WE FINISHED the map, and Charlie left, we got into the car and drove to Tulsa.
Now it was five o’clock, an
d the first rehearsal was about to start. Jacob was fidgeting two seats over. He had needed an empty seat on either side of him. He seemed almost as nervous as I was. But hopefully having Mom here would help.
“All right, everyone. Please join us onstage and make a big circle,” said Dorothy.
Jacob and I made our way up. There were about twenty-five of us, and every kid here had been given a part. One by one, we introduced ourselves and the parts we would be playing. Some were pirates, some were Indians, others were mermaids or animals. And of course, there were the Lost Boys, like Jacob.
Finally, it was my turn. “Hi. My name is Olivia Grant, and I’m playing the part of Peter Pan.”
Everyone was quiet for a minute. And then one of the Lost Boys spoke up.
“A girl? A girl can’t play Peter Pan!”
A few others laughed.
I looked around the circle. Some kids looked confused. Some were nodding their heads. I found Mom’s eyes in the audience. She mouthed, “It’s okay.” But it wasn’t.
Stephen looked around the circle, too. “Does anyone else here think a girl shouldn’t be playing the part of Peter Pan?” he asked.
A few kids raised their hands.
“I see,” he said.
Stephen looked at Dorothy. She nodded back. They were going to change their minds right there and let someone else play the part of Peter. I knew it.
I felt my palms start to sweat. This was a mistake. I shouldn’t have come. I rubbed my arms and felt goose bumps prickle my skin. I wanted to run offstage, or hide, or something. But that was something Jacob would have done. That was a neverdo. So, I held still, standing as tall and steady as I could.
Stephen tucked his clipboard under his arm. “Okay. Well, this is a good thing to talk about, and I need all of us to be on the same page about this one. So, have a seat.”
We all sat down in our circle formation and I swallowed hard, trying to hold back the tears and the lump that was rising in my throat. I never should have agreed to play Peter.