“Order,” I whisper to Jenni, who is now holding on to my arm. “Order comes first.” I rub my eyes with the hard parts of my palms, like a punishment, and walk away. Mom shakes one finger and says, “Don’t forget ‘subphylum’! It is on the bottom!” and disappears.
* * *
It’s my first time on the bench that I’m not looking for Benny H. and as a matter of fact, I hope I don’t see him. I hope I don’t see anyone. I stare at the frozen lake and try to make my mind gray and blank, like the ice. Like Phuc says monks do (real ones) when they meditate. So I can get a break from all the colors and words and that buzzing feeling like someone added extra blood to my body but there’s nowhere for it to go. And from the last poem, still waiting for me. When should I read it? How long do I want Dad to last?
I’m staring so hard at the ice it takes me forever to hear the water.
I walk to the shore and bend down to the lake. The ice is out all along the edges and the open patches of water are blue, reflecting the sky the way the Dakota said it. I stick one hand in and the water is cold and clear. I stick in my other hand and stay like that for a long time, like time is irrelevant now, like maybe I live outside of time like Benny H., feeling my hands get colder and colder.
* * *
Luckily, Mr. Lindberg hands our tests back flipped over so no one else can see the red C at the top of mine. I’ve always sucked at math, but I’ve never gotten a C in my life.
“Justin,” Mr. Lindberg says.
“Yeah?”
“Come see me a minute, before you leave.”
“Okay.” The rest of the class is packing up. Phuc already has his backpack on and both thumbs tucked into the straps, which makes him look like he’s going into battle. Which he pretty much is, going into the halls with his hair gelled up like that. I shake my head quick, trying to clear it, but it’s all cluttered up like an old nest, filled with leaves and feathers so you can’t see the pattern anymore—the sensible circle it started with.
“You okay?” Phuc asks.
“Yeah.”
“Hate to say it, but you still look like crap. Or maybe worse.”
“Phuc,” Mr. Lindberg says, all the way from his desk. “Language.”
“Sorry,” Phuc calls to him. “You sure?” he asks me, and I nod. He knows I’m not okay, but what’s he going to do about it? What am I going to do? What is there to do?
I walk to Mr. Lindberg’s desk and sit in the chair he pulled up next to it. I tuck my backpack between my feet, and it reminds me of Phuc’s thumbs. We are all in battle. But not Mr. Lindberg. He has on a navy striped shirt and pants that look like they belong to a suit, like maybe he should be a businessman instead of a math teacher. His shoes have tassels, and his hair is gelled like Phuc’s, but (reasonably) sideways. “I’m worried about you,” he says.
“I’ll study harder for the next one. I just…lost my focus.”
But Mr. Lindberg frowns. “It’s not the test. You don’t look well. Do you feel okay? Did you sleep last night?”
I shake my head. Not last night. Or the one before that or before that.
“What’s on your mind, Justin?”
I do not say, I am being tortured by five poems in a notebook under my bed. I do not say anything.
Mr. Lindberg waits. He’s relaxed in his chair, like this is just another equation for him to solve. Justin, a seventh-grade boy, recently lost his father in an unbelievably embarrassing accident. Well, was it an accident? Let’s say “incident.” So far, he seems to be doing well, but of late, he seems distracted and tired, and recently got a C on an exam. How do you (a) find out what’s bothering him (other than the obvious reason stated above), and (b) offer a solution? Show your work.
“Why do you teach math?” I ask Mr. Lindberg. “I mean, what do you like about it? I mean the math part, not the teaching.” Because, seriously? There is no way he likes the teaching.
Mr. Lindberg smiles. “No one’s really asked me that before.” He drums his fingers on his desk. “I think what I like about math are the possibilities in it.”
“Possibilities?”
“Yeah, like, the more we know about math, the more equations we have, the closer we get to the truth of things. Everything we know about the universe begins with math.”
“Huh.”
“But also.” He sits up a little straighter. “There’s this sense that we’ll never know it all. We’re just on this journey toward knowing. Then someone discovers something else and we get another piece of the puzzle. Or maybe we launch in a whole new direction. It’s exciting!”
“ ‘Exciting’ is not a word I would have used.”
He laughs. “Maybe not with algebra.” He rubs his cheek with one hand, like checking his shave, which is perfectly smooth, like everything else about him. “But the cool thing about math is that no matter how much information we have, there is always more. There will always be more.”
On the bench at the spot where Dad died, I open the notebook, slide out the last paper clip, and turn to the last written-on page. Not because of that stuff Mr. Lindberg said about truth and possibilities and how there will always be more. I know this is the last poem, and that Dad is dead no matter what. But I am still alive.
On the lake, the ice is completely out and the water is celebrating. All the waves are tossing around with their white tops high-fiving, and for some reason it makes me want to read out loud. I guess seeing all that splashing and freedom makes it seem easy.
“Like a Man
Four days of running, holding on
To the back of a bright green bike
While Justin wobbles and cries. (He’s too scared.
Murphy did it on his first try.)
I let go, and the bike drunk-weaves. Crashes.
Blood blooms from his lip and peeks
Between his teeth. He’s screaming
And so am I. ‘Calm down!’
We sit. I lift the handkerchief to his face
And taste Grayson’s blood. Grayson’s blood
In my throat and in my nose, so I smell it
With every breath. In my hair and in my sweat.
I sputter and cry (I’m too scared),
And the handkerchief comes back
Under my bowed head. Here, Daddy.
Forget what I said. I want him to be
Exactly this.”
* * *
I ring the doorbell and Phuc’s dad opens the door. The news is on behind him, making the whole living room blue, and the reporter says, “…Kurds in northern Iraq, calling it a massacre.” Phuc’s dad is squinting either from watching TV in the dark or the dead Kurds or wondering what I’m doing here at nine on a school night. Or all three. “Hi, Justin,” he says. “Come in, come in. Is everything all right?”
I nod, still catching my breath from running four blocks in the cold and dark. “Is Phuc home?”
“Yes, Phuc is here. In the kitchen.” His voice has all this air in it. Like the words float more than talk. Like flower petals falling to the ground, in no hurry. “Come,” he says/floats, and I follow him, through the blue light, into Phuc’s yellow kitchen, which is glowing like it’s the center of the universe, smelling like cherries and dish soap.
Phuc is at the table with his three sisters around him and his hair in a million tiny ponytails. “Don’t say a single word,” he warns me. His sisters are laughing and dancing and shrieking as always, all with wet hair and pajamas and bare feet.
“Phuc is so pretty!” one of the girls says.
His mom sits next to him, grading papers. She slides her pen down a row of numbers and marks out number five with a single green slash. It’s nice that she doesn’t use red. “Phuc is a good sport,” she says, and smiles at me, and I guess my heart is still in there somewhere because I feel it crack. We used to be like this. A
family.
Phuc stands up and swats away his sisters like gnats, and we go to the roof. The chairs are still there and Phuc brings two blankets. “You want the telescope?” he asks, halfway out the window. I shake my head. We sit and build our little cocoons. The sky is clear and starry.
“The Dakota call themselves Star People,” I tell Phuc. “Because they came down from the stars to be on Earth.”
“Why?” Phuc asks.
“Why what?”
“Why did they come down? From the stars to Earth.”
“I don’t know. The book didn’t say.” Phuc always thinks of questions like that, from a different atmosphere. I stare up. What did the Dakota see on Earth that made them want to leave the sky? Or maybe they didn’t want to leave? Maybe they were chased down? Or maybe they were sent by some kind of force? Like, on a mission? Or maybe it was their destiny and they had to come? Go back! I want to yell at the sky, at the Dakota, at the stars shooting toward Earth, at history, at everything that’s already happened and can never not happen. It’s a disaster down here!
“Earth does look beautiful from space,” Phuc says. “Very deceptive.”
“I read the last poem,” I tell him.
“Really? What was it like?”
“It was…It was actually amazing. They all were.” Phuc smiles at the sky. “They were like looking at a single moment in time, like a millisecond, through a microscope. But connecting it to all these other moments and things. They were intense. And sad. And…beautiful.”
“That’s so cool. Your dad wrote poetry and you didn’t even know.”
“Yeah. But that’s all there is. So. The cat is dead. In reality. And I still don’t know if he killed himself. My dad, I mean. Not the cat.”
Phuc looks from the sky to me. “I don’t think you’ll ever know that,” he says, in the quiet flower-petal voice that sounds just like his dad’s. “I’m sorry.”
“Yeah, I know. Thanks.” Then we just sit for a while, like we always do, watching the huge sky.
* * *
I heard the car honking, I just didn’t think my mom could be so lame. So Sarah, who’s best friends with Jenni and one of the most popular girls at school, has to tug on my sleeve and say, “Um, Justin? Isn’t that your mom?”
I look up, and Mom is waving frantically like she did when I got home from visiting my Iowa cousins one summer. When I was eight. “Yep,” I say. “That’s her.”
Mom keeps waving, even though we’re looking right at her.
“Thanks,” I tell Sarah, and cross between the buses. I head straight for the car and Mom finally stops waving. I get in and slam the door and glare at her. “Thanks for that.”
“I didn’t think you could see me,” she says.
“Well, I definitely heard you.”
Mom grins. “How was school?”
“Fine until now. What are you even doing here?”
“I got off early, so I thought we’d pick up Grandpa and take him out for pie.” Except we can’t go anywhere because of all the buses, so we just sit, with the heat blasting between us and me trying not to make eye contact with anyone, and Mom fixing her bangs in the little mirror in the sun visor.
“Mom?” She looks at me, like this might be a question she knew was coming but has no idea how to answer. “Why do old people like pie so much?”
She laughs and snaps the visor shut. “Beats me. Hey! It’s Tuesday. How was the social worker?”
“Social.”
She frowns. “You should give her a chance. She seems super nice.”
The last bus rolls past, and Mom pulls out behind it. The kids in the back are looking at a magazine and don’t look at us (small miracles). “She is nice. But she’s always trying to fix something, and there’s nothing to fix.”
“Hmm.”
I roll my eyes. Mom always says “Hmm” when she’s trying to get me to say more. She learned it from some speaker they had at parent night. The bonkers thing is that it works. Every time.
“It’s like she has this idea about how I’m supposed to be, and I’m just not that,” I say. “I’m just me. Like, Grandpa could still write music, you know. I know he could. But he just wants to watch birds and eat pie. Fine. And Benny H. used to be a history professor, and now he just wants to walk down the street and talk to old ghosts. Okay. Why can’t they just do what they want and it’s enough?”
Mom nods. “And what do you want?”
“I want you never to honk like a crazy person in front of my whole school ever again.”
Mom laughs. “Done.”
“Mom?”
“Yeah?”
“Thanks for everything.”
* * *
Kids are pouring out of Mr. Bauer’s class while he’s still yelling instructions for the extra credit that no one ever does because it’s basically an extra project. As soon as I see Jenni, I call her name, before I can chicken out and pretend I’m not waiting for her.
“Hey,” she says, and we start walking together.
“Hey.”
“You okay?” she asks.
“Yeah. I wanted to say sorry about the other day, outside science.” I half smile at her.
“No worries.” We keep walking. “I forgot to tell you, we missed you at the beach that day.”
“Yeah. I’m sorry about that too. I just…Right after you asked me, I had to deal with some stuff….” I stop talking because I sound totally stupid.
But Jenni shrugs. “It’s cool. I get it.”
Then all I can think of is Dad. How he used all his words on Mom. How he listened to everything she said. And how I will never know if he killed himself, but I am 100 percent sure that he loved Mom more than anything else in the whole world.
“Wait,” I say, and stop walking. So Jenni stops too. We face each other. The kids behind us bump into us, then start walking around like cars around an accident. Some stare at us. I can feel it because I’m so used to it. “Can I be honest?” I ask.
“Why wouldn’t you be?” She’s squinting like preparing herself for something she doesn’t want to see.
“It was super nice of you to invite me to the beach. Like, super nice. And I super appreciate it. If, that’s, even a thing. It’s just that, ever since the stuff with my dad…”
Her expression changes, adjusting to the seriousness, and she leans forward.
“I don’t like talking about it,” I tell her, “and I know your friends are cool and everything. I don’t mean…I just didn’t want to, get asked about it or get, like, gawked at. Anymore.” My voice cracks on “anymore.” I take a deep breath and pinch the crap out of my arm. Don’t cry, don’t cry, don’t cry, don’t cry. “And the other thing is, you don’t have to invite me to stuff because you feel bad. Like, I’m okay. I have my own friends, and I’m really fine.”
“You thought I invited you because I felt bad for you?” Jenni asks.
“I mean, I don’t know. I just…I’m just saying.”
“For the record, I invited you because I like hanging out with you.”
“Okay.” My voice sounds like Axl Rose, as a kitten. Most embarrassing moment in the history of this hallway. I should probably nail a plaque to the wall, right where we’re standing.
“But I get what you’re saying,” Jenni says. She lowers her voice. “About the gawking. That’s totally understandable.”
“Really? Thanks.” I shove my hands in my pockets. For no reason.
“So I have another idea.”
“Okay.” I feel like I just tumbled out of a dryer and landed on the Laundromat floor but I’m still soaking wet, like the dryer ran out of dimes. This girl. I swear.
“Do you like scary movies?” Jenni asks.
“I don’t know. I haven’t seen that many.” Or any. What in God’s name does she see
in me?
“Me neither! But there’s this super scary movie Sarah told me about called Children of the Corn. You want to watch it with me? Just you.” She points her finger and lands it on my chest. “And me.” She aims her thumb back at herself and grins, holding nothing back, like Murphy used to.
My chest starts blooming like it’s growing a flower in the exact spot where Jenni’s finger landed. I smile. “That would be amazing.”
* * *
“Dude, what happened?” I ask, and slide into the front seat where only dorks sit, but I don’t care because (1) I am a dork, and (2) Rodney apparently had some kind of breakdown. He cut all his hair off and looks like a baby squirrel.
“I’m getting married.” Rodney flashes a huge smile, and I can’t help it, I picture his cheeks full of acorns.
“So you had to cut your hair?”
Rodney laughs. “I didn’t have to. I wanted to.”
“I don’t believe you.”
He laughs again, like the whole world is just full of soap bubbles. “I did. Let me tell you something, bro. When you meet the right girl, you’ll do anything. If Kimberly asked me to move to Florida and wrestle a gator, I would. No questions asked.”
I touch my chest where Jenni made the flower bloom. But then I panic. “Wait. Are you still gonna drive the bus?”
Rodney laughs (again). “Are you kidding? I’m gonna drive the bus twenty-four–seven just to pay off the wedding!”
I actually sigh with relief. “Her name’s Kimberly?”
“Yeah.”
“Is she nice?”
Rodney sets his big hand on top of my head. It covers the whole thing. His thumb hangs onto my forehead. “She’s so nice.” He turns back around and pulls the door shut, but I hang over the seat with my chin on my hands, watching him drive. “I told her about you,” Rodney says.
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