“Jason D.”
“Yeah, Max?”
Max tilts her head to the sky, a narrow beam of sunlight slipping through the buildings and falling on her face. She closes her eyes and her cheeks turn pink under the glow.
“It’s a lot easier to be scared together.”
Seventeen
The pigeons have taken off and the rat has disappeared once more. Max comes out from behind the dumpster and peeks out from the alley. We’re staring at the backs of people—a sea of jackets, sweaters, and scarves. Max turns to look back at me.
“We don’t have much more to go,” she says. “The entrance to the zoo is on Sixty-Fourth Street. That’s just another block and a half.”
“You sound like you’re from here.”
Max kicks her toe at the pavement playfully.
“I wasn’t joking. New York is the coolest.”
Now that I’ve seen New York, I know it’s not the violent and dangerous place my mom thinks it is. I hope I’ll get to tell her so.
“I wish my mom didn’t think this place was so dangerous.”
“More dangerous than Afghanistan?”
“I don’t know. All I know is that she really liked our town. She would tell me that all the time. She liked our neighbors and that she could walk to just about everywhere she needed to go. Plus, there’s a university near us, and she thinks I’m going to go there and become a doctor or an engineer or something.”
“She’s picked out where you’re going to college already?” Max asks incredulously.
“Yeah,” I say with a small smile. Now that I know about Max’s seizures, I feel like I know her better. It really was as if I didn’t know her full story without knowing about her seizures.
I remember her words. I’m not a genius. I’m an epileptic. That’s all I am.
That doesn’t seem right to me. She may be an epileptic, but that’s not all she is.
“What’s your mom like?” Max asks.
“My mom is . . . well, she’s my mom.” How can I tell the story of who my mom is with just a few words? “She’s cool even if she is pretty strict. She likes singing along with the radio but gets all the words wrong. She wants me to be American, like, really American, so she bought me books of nursery rhymes and lullabies when I was little so she could teach them all to me. It was stuff she’d never learned when she was a kid so it was strange for her, especially the ‘Rock-a-bye Baby’ song.”
“What’s strange about that song?”
“What’s strange about a bedtime song where a baby falls out of a tree with his whole cradle? Why would you sing that to a baby about to go to sleep?”
“Oh,” Max says, and her lips stay in that perfect O shape for a moment before she speaks again. “I guess it is a little creepy.”
With every city block we cross, I learn something about Max and she learns something about me.
“What do you think is going to happen to your mom?”
I can’t answer that question. I’ve tried to keep moving so I won’t have to think about it. But of course, it’s there, the thought that she’s on her way to a place that’s always in the news and never for a good reason. I wonder if the same bad people who took away my dad are going to find out she’s back.
But my mom’s tough. When we lost our furniture in an apartment fire, she slept on the floor and made me a bed out of all our blankets. She stays up late at night to read my schoolbooks so she can help me with my homework. She’s the one who taught me how to fix a leaking faucet, and before I started doing it, she was the one would get up early on snow days to clear the steps of our building and a path to the street. She always seems to wake up when I do, even in the middle of the night.
“My mom’s kind of a warrior,” I say with a wry smile, because I’ve just realized that’s exactly what she is. And realizing how tough she is makes me hopeful that she’s going to find a way to get back to me like she promised.
“A warrior!” Max exclaims. I can see a pause in her step, and I know she’s considering the word, trying it on. She says it once more, learning something about herself, as we cross another block. “I like that. A warrior.”
We trod on, Max pausing every ten minutes or so to take a break (though she pretends to be checking her watch or retying her sneakers). We keep our heads low and fall into a steady pace, our tired feet hitting the pavement in synchrony.
When I ask Max what time it is, she doesn’t answer. She’s standing in front of a store window.
“Max, we’ve got to cross the street again. You okay?”
When Max still doesn’t answer, I get nervous. What am I going to do if she has a seizure?
“Sorry, just spaced out for a minute.” Maybe she can see the panic on my face, because she tries to reassure me. “Seriously, Jason D. I’m fine.”
The white stick figure on the crosswalk sign tells us to cross. When we’re back on the sidewalk, Max points to a cluster of trees on the other side of the avenue.
“See that?” she asks, turning to look at me.
“Central Park,” I whisper. It feels like we’ve just spotted the ocean.
I always thought New York City was all tall buildings and crowded streets. What I’m looking at is nothing like that. Standing at the park’s edge, I can see it’s a world within a world. A wall of trees frames its borders. I can’t see through them, even after we’ve crossed the street. In front of the trees, as if guarding this entrance to the park, is an enormous golden statue atop a tall concrete base. I squint against the sun’s glare. It’s a figure of a man, straight-backed and grim-faced, riding a horse. The man’s cape billows behind in an invisible wind. A stone-faced woman stands before him and his horse, her right arm raised toward the sky and a feather as long as her torso in her left hand. She’s got a garland on her head and graceful angel wings.
“That looks so real,” I whisper. I can almost see the horse’s nostrils flare.
Max is less impressed but lingers while I take in the statue. Though it’s made of metal, the horse’s legs look muscular and rippled. The female figure wears a draping gown. She looks like an angel or a goddess out of some kind of mythology story.
“We can’t hang out here, Jason D.”
The unmoving horse has a curled front leg, as if he’s about to trot off. His neck is so thick I could barely have circled it with my two arms. What would it feel like to ride such a powerful animal? I picture myself charging ahead on its back with my head held high and the guardian angel pointing me onward.
“Victory,” Max says, seeing how captivated I am.
I turn to face her.
“What?”
“She’s Victory. That’s what the plaque says.” She looks back over her shoulder, and I follow her gaze. Five people are crossing the street. They’re talking to one another when one of them looks over in our direction, an expression of curiosity crossing her face.
Have they seen the alert about the missing kids? Max is right. We’ve got to keep moving.
We cross the square quickly and duck into the green sanctuary. The sounds of people and cars fade. Dry grass crunches under the soles of our sneakers, and a light breeze rustles the leaves of the soaring trees.
“Hey, Max.” The statue reminded me of a riddle. “A cowboy rode into town on Friday. Two days later he rides out on Friday.”
“A riddle—now?”
I nod.
“Fine then. Two days later . . . still Friday.” She makes me repeat the riddle and refuses to let me tell her the answer. When I think she’ll give up, she stops in her tracks and points at me.
“The horse’s name is Friday!”
In a patch of bushes to my left, there’s a snap, and my heart skips a beat guessing at what might have just scampered away. A bushy gray tail passes on my left, but it’s gone before I can tell. Max, knees high, continues to make her way across a low hill studded with trees. We’re walking toward a glimmering pond on the other side.
I am disappearing into a fairy
tale forest. Whether the forest is enchanted or haunted, I don’t know yet.
Eighteen
Max walks over to the edge of the pond and takes a seat on a bed of stones. She puts the backpack beside her and sits cross-legged. There are no people in sight, so I do the same. The water glows green gold with the reflection of the surrounding trees. It looks like the trio of mallards is gliding through painted water.
“Think you’ll ever get to go back home?” Max asks. She’s facing the water, as if she might be asking her question of the ducks.
“I don’t know,” I say. “Maybe one day, if my mom comes back.”
“Behind my house, there’s a wooded area with an old well and a lake. It’s like a private forest. I drop pennies into the well and make wishes. And there’s this one cluster of trees that comes together in a circle just big enough for me to sit and stretch out my legs. I know it sounds crazy, but I could sit in that tree circle for hours. It doesn’t have walls or anything fancy in it, but it feels like the safest place in the world.”
That kind of reminds me of how I feel when I climb up to the roof of our building. The well she’s mentioned reminds me of another riddle.
“What is it that goes with a wide-mouthed grin and returns with falling tears?”
Max looks over at me, a faint smile on her face. After a moment, she shrugs her shoulders and waits for me to tell her.
“A bucket in the well.”
“Ah, that’s a good one,” she says. I can tell she’s imagining an empty bucket drifting down into the dark well and coming back, water sloshing out of its sides like tears.
“What do you do when you sit in the circle of trees?”
“Promise not to laugh?”
“C’mon, Max.”
Max grins and continues. She knows by now I wouldn’t laugh at anything she does.
“Sometimes I pretend it’s actually in Central Park and I’m right there in the middle of New York City. Sometimes I just go there to read. On the Fourth of July, there are fireworks at the lake. My parents don’t usually let me watch because they’re afraid the flashing lights will start a seizure, but last year they let me try. I took a blanket out there and watched the colors light the sky.”
I can picture Max with her head resting on her overlapping hands, staring upward at the night sky and seeing fireworks for the first time. My mother and I always watch the fireworks from the rooftop of our building with Ms. Raz and our other neighbors. It wouldn’t be much fun if I couldn’t join them.
“Now that you’re in Central Park, does it feel like your tree circle back home?”
“Nothing feels like home.”
I know what she means. Max looks down at her hands. I’ve been curious but didn’t want to ask until now.
“What happened to your hands, Max?”
Max turns her hands over then squeezes them together.
“I was afraid I wouldn’t remember the way to my tree circle again. So the day before we were going to the hospital, I took my dad’s carving knife and marked little arrows into the trees so I could find my way back to it. Then I felt bad that I was hurting the trees. None of this was their fault. My parents had to pull me off a tree. I wouldn’t let go of it.”
She closes her hands into fists.
“My mom couldn’t get all the splinters out. The doctors in the hospital had to do it.”
“Do you really think you’d forget the way to your favorite place?”
Max shrugs. “I didn’t want to take the chance,” she says simply.
I had let go of my mother too easily. Why hadn’t I put up as much of a fight as Max?
“What about you? Where’s your favorite place to be?”
I’d never thought about my favorite place to be. I like sitting on the rooftop with my pigeons. I like going home after school. And sometimes I like hanging out in the laundromat with my mother. Then there’s the park that we go to, with a paper bag filled with my mom’s spiced potatoes in folded bread and bottles of juice. All my favorite places are right around my home, and I can’t go back to any of them.
“I’m still working on figuring that out, I guess.”
A squirrel bounces playfully from branch to branch in a nearby tree. He pauses and meets my eye for a brief second. The squirrel flies about four feet down to the earth. I hear a crunch and a snap, and he vanishes into the soft bed of fallen leaves.
“I don’t think I could have told any of my friends back home about this stuff,” I tell Max sheepishly. She knows by “stuff” I mean what’s happened to my mother. “Even when I found out about my mom’s papers, I didn’t want to tell anyone. Just seemed like that could change everything.”
Max nods.
“My second-grade teacher used to tell the kids to be extra nice to me because I was a brave and special girl—as if I couldn’t tell what kind of special she meant. I was as popular as extra homework that year. But I fixed that problem.”
“How’d you fix it?”
Max laughs at her memory.
“I brought in a jar of live spiders. And a jar of worms. I had holes punched in the lids to let in air. Then, before class started, I super-glued the jars to my desk. My teacher totally flipped. She tried to be cool while she asked me why I’d brought in spiders and worms but her voice was as squeaky as a mouse. I told her it’s what special and brave kids do.”
“Did you seriously do that?”
Max nods and holds up her hand as if she’s taking an oath.
“If you ever meet Ms. Kaplan, you can ask her yourself.”
“I never thought being brave was a bad thing,” I say. “But I guess if you’re being brave it’s only because something bad is happening.”
Max doesn’t say anything after that. She pulls her notebook out of her backpack and fishes around for her pen.
I look at the water and the ducks. I watch how the leaves bend and curl with the breeze and the way the trunks of trees cast long, dramatic shadows. The sun is high in the sky, which tells me the hours are passing quickly. We’ve got to get moving.
As if Max has sensed what I’m thinking, she zips up her backpack. The notebook is gone. She presses her hands against the rocks and pushes herself to stand. I tilt my head back and look up at her. Standing against the bright sun, I see only her silhouette. She looks tall and brave and strong. I want to tell her but I know now that’s not what she wants to hear.
Instead, I stand up too and we start walking again. We stay close to the trees, believing their trunks can hide us from the world. Max has promised that the zoo is close.
“Max, you’re right!”
We’re staring at an entry made of three brick arches. At the center is a tower with the round face of a clock. It’s already noon. With every minute that ticks by, Max and I are in bigger and bigger trouble.
Parents are pushing babies in strollers. Teenagers walk in groups. A small chunk of New York City’s millions is here today. It’s an odd thing to see a crowd now. I’m not sure if we can disappear into them or if we’re going to be spotted by them.
Max’s eyes are wide and bright, too close to her simple wish to believe anything could go wrong now. With all that’s happened since Friday, I can still feel happy for her that she’s made it this far. At least she’ll be able to visit the zoo before her surgery.
“Uh-oh,” I moan. Max stops short. We’ve both just spotted the sign for ticket booths.
“Do you think the tickets are free?” Max asks.
“Tickets usually aren’t,” I say slowly. I hate to think we won’t make it past this point, but we only have sixteen dollars left in Max’s bag. I used up everything I had on my train ticket into the city.
Max is stretching herself, standing on tiptoes and craning her neck to see over the fences and trees and into the zoo’s enclosures. She bites her lip and looks around. We can’t just hang out here, wondering. There are no ticket machines as far as I can see, so I head straight for the booths.
“Jason D,” Max calls ou
t after me. “Where are you going?”
“Hello,” I say cheerily to the gray-haired man behind the booth. “Are kids’ tickets free? My friend and I were wondering.”
“Your friend,” he repeats, searching behind me.
“My friend,” I say, pointing my thumb in Max’s direction.
“How old are you two?” the man asks. My palms get sweaty. Why is he asking? Then my eyes fall upon a sign next to the ticket window. Ticket prices are based on age. Children’s tickets cost thirteen dollars. That’s cheaper than adult tickets but far from free.
“We’re both children,” I say in my most adult voice.
“Only kids under two get in free,” he says. He’s got the same concerned look on his face as the man walking the two dogs and Dr. Shabani at the race. Maybe I’m acting too nervous.
“Well, that makes sense. I’ve never seen a two-year-old carry around much cash,” I say with a casual smile.
“I suppose not,” he replies, mildly amused. “Any adults here with you?”
I’ve gotten myself into this mess. I’ve got to get myself out.
“Sure, my . . . my parents are here with me.”
Why did I say that?
“Great. Why don’t you have them come up and buy the tickets?”
I nod, giving the man something close to a smile before I turn and walk away. My eyes burn.
My parents are here with me.
Those words have never before come out of my mouth. They’ve left a strange aftertaste—partly sweet and partly bitter.
“Did you get the tickets?” Max asks excitedly. I clear my throat and squint, trying to send the tears back.
“No,” I say. My voice sounds thick and strange. “We need an adult with us.”
“What’s wrong?” Max puts a hand on my forearm.
“Nothing.” I move away, not wanting to be touched.
“Hey, Jason D, you can talk to me. Remember?”
I do remember, but I can’t do this now. I’m afraid of what will happen if I let myself think about it too much. It was bad enough living with just a photo of my dad. Now I don’t have either of my parents. Max and I are tucked against the side of a looming archway, our backs to the traffic of people.
The Sky at Our Feet Page 10