Husky

by Justin Sayre

  It’s around the ponds that I see the Ellen that laughs so hard, she has to blow her nose, and the Ellen that loves dancing to music strangers are playing on their speakers, and the Ellen that sticks up for me, all the time, even when it’s me that is being awful to myself. That’s the Ellen that takes my arm after I’ve said something really horrible about myself and says, “Could you stop talking about my friend like that?”

  I always forget that. But at the ponds, she reminds me.

  Ellen still walks through the park sort of fast, but she takes in everything and has something to say about all of it. She loves to see older girls’ outfits. Shorts and big parachute shirts, with big, long necklaces, those are Ellen’s favorites this summer. “I can’t wear them, because I’m so short. I’d drag that necklace on the ground. Allegra has one just like that though.”

  “Allegra. Worst Evah,” I say, and that makes Ellen really laugh.

  Allegra is a cool girl in our school who started hanging around with Sophie this year. She says this thing where everything is the Best Evah! Everything. Or at least everything she likes. Ellen loved to make fun of it to Sophie at first, who used to laugh about it but recently stopped. Sophie and Allegra are becoming real friends, like us friends, and I hate it. Ellen does too.

  Ellen said something crazy about it to Sophie, like, “She’s Gross. She just wants to hang out with you because you’re black.”

  That made Sophie laugh and say, “I match her shoes.”

  That made us all laugh. But it didn’t make Sophie stop hanging out with Allegra. If anything, it only got worse.

  “Did you hear about the makeover?” Ellen says as she stops to watch some boys park their bikes. Her eyes get really big like she’s had an accident. It’s the creepiest thing she’s done today.

  “What makeover?” I ask.

  “Forget it. Seriously. Nothing,” says Ellen, going back to short barks.

  “Oh, no! Now you have to tell me. You have to,” I say, pulling at Ellen’s sleeve and watching her eyes, and she looks for a way to get out of here. She hears the sound of the ice-cream truck and runs away, yelling, “You want?”

  “No, I’m fine.” I’m not, but I’m not going, and you need to tell me, Ellen. I say all this with my eyes, and that just makes her mad, because for the first time today, I’m not doing what she’s telling me to do.

  So she says, “Do you not have any money or do you think you’re too fat?” Like it’s nothing. But it’s everything. She knows that. It’s not just a thing that everyone can say. She’s not even allowed to say it. But she does, and now both those things are just out there, as if everyone knows them like it’s common knowledge. And maybe it is, but I don’t want it to be. And I don’t want it coming from Ellen. My mouth falls open when I’m supposed to say something back to her, and I can’t.

  “No. Ellen. I’m. Fine,” I almost growl at her.

  “What’s wrong? Wait!” Ellen looks at me. She knows, but she doesn’t want to. Or she regrets it. She freaks out in these moments when she can’t control the other person. She doesn’t know what to do when she ruins things.

  “I need to go.”

  “No you don’t. C’mon. I’m sorry,” Ellen says, grabbing my arm.

  “It doesn’t matter if you are. You just can’t say . . .”

  “I know. But both those things aren’t true. So it’s funny. Seriously. Because it’s not true. It’s not.” Ellen laughs. It’s a joke trying to get me to laugh back, but I don’t. She’s definitely buying the ice cream now.

  We walk home slowly with the cones. I hate getting anything on me, so I’m always really careful. Mostly because it’s gross, but also mostly because when you’re even a little bigger and you get a food stain on you, even the smallest one, from an accident or a spill, that anybody could get, people think the worst. They think, Oh, look at that fat kid, he was so hungry he just couldn’t help himself. He’s a slave to the ice cream. He was probably eating a five-gallon tub of it anyway, so I guess it serves him right. Wear a bib, fatty. Wear a bib!

  People never say this. But they think it. And when you see it on their faces, it’s awful.

  For Ellen, it doesn’t matter. She’s always dripping on herself and no one cares. The braces are her excuse.

  “Here, let me wipe your face,” I say, picking a big glob of sprinkles off her chin. She smiles thanks, and looks like she wants to say something but takes another bite. We’re quiet for a while on the way home, which might be the ice cream, but might be the other stuff too. We’re a block away when she says, “So Sophie didn’t tell you about the makeover thing?”

  I might have an ice-cream headache, or I might be totally lost to the world, but my head actually hurts. All the words in the sentence I can’t really understand. Sophie. Told. Ellen. Something I don’t know.

  “What makeover thing?”

  “For her birthday,” says Ellen.

  More Words. What is this? How? What?

  “No,” I say. And Ellen just looks at me, like she’s actually sorry for me. Like the ice cream was poisoned and I don’t know it yet, but I’m going to soon as I die right in front of her.

  “It’s Allegra’s thing,” says Ellen. “I don’t want to go.”

  Now she’s Invited! I’m not even supposed to know about it, but she’s Invited!

  But I just say, “Yeah. Sophie told me. It’s cool.”

  It’s not. It’s the furthest thing from cool ever. It’s the opposite. It’s the worst, the Worst Evah.

  “I should just run home,” I say, not knowing what else to do, so I actually start to run. Running, I drop my ice cream right on the street, and a little flick of it splashes up and lands right in the middle of my shirt. Now everything is officially ruined. I littered and I’m gross. Of course I’m not invited.

  “All right, bye,” Ellen yells after me. I bet she’s doing her eye thing, because she’s annoyed at me for just leaving her there. But I don’t care. I really don’t. I need to go. I need to be home. I need to get this shirt off. I don’t care about anything else at the moment. It’s just the shirt. And what people will think. Nothing else in the world matters. Not Ellen getting her braces off or not even not getting invited to my former best friend’s birthday party. I don’t care about that. At all. I just want this shirt off so I don’t have to be the fat kid who couldn’t help himself. That’s all I want.

  CHAPTER 5

  Most mornings in the summer, even this late in the summer, I get to sleep in. It’s a thing we all know but don’t talk about. But now Nanny gets anxious about it.

  “You’ll sleep your life away, Ducks, and you’ll regret it.”

  I have never found this to be true. I love to sleep, and I really love my bed. Why can’t I stay in it? It’s super soft, and I have T-shirt sheets, which feel like T-shirts but are sheets. Thank you, inventors of America! I can have the door closed in my small room at the top of our brownstone on 7th Street and 7th Avenue, and I can be by myself, exactly as I want to be. What’s so wrong about that? I always want to stay in bed.

  Especially today.

  It’s been two days since Ellen asked about Sophie’s birthday makeover thing, and I still don’t know if I’m definitely not invited or if it’s something else. I don’t know. Nothing. Mom hasn’t mentioned it to me, which is super weird because she and Sophie’s mom talk about everything, every day. Maybe Mom knows, like Ellen, and just doesn’t want to tell me. Maybe she’s even going, because it’s something, like, crazy fun and they’re all going without me. They’ll all be sitting around eating pizza, or something really nice like caviar, I barely even know what that is, but they’ll be going to really fancy spa places and doing fancy spa things. And I won’t even be allowed in the door. I’ll have to stay home because no one likes me. No one. I should just wear my “Cool Dude” shirt and seal the deal forever.

  These are the
only times I hate being in my room. Yes, it’s nice and it’s soft. But it can also be the place where I think terrible, terrible things one after another after another, and there’s nothing or no one there to stop me. Just more and more, thought after thought, until I imagine Juan Diego Flórez (he’s an opera guy) singing Sophie’s favorite song to her as a birthday gift, which is a thing that would never happen in the real world, Sophie doesn’t even know who he is, but in my bed alone, it’s just another great thing that happens at the makeover party that everyone gets invited to except me.

  It’s definitely time to get up.

  Nanny can hear every single thing that happens in every corner of the house, even though she’s three flights down, and Jock’s TV tied to the top of the refrigerator is blasting. She knows every creak and where it comes from, and no matter where she is, she knows what’s going on. So the minute, no, really the second I open my door, I hear, “Well, he’s finally up! And what’s he bound to do today?”

  I know I should be used to it, but still it’s so loud and the first thing in my day, that it always makes me step back a little. So I make a face, which somehow makes something in the house shift, because:

  “And don’t make that face, Ducks. I see you and I don’t like it.”

  I’d say that this is impossible, not unless she has cameras everywhere, but she’s always right, so I guess I just haven’t found them yet. Or she just knows the house. We live in her old brownstone, which she’s always lived in since she came to America. My grandfather, Jock, lived in it before he met her. He grew up in this house too. It’s an interesting thing about New York. If you have a nice place, you stay in it, forever. It’s the only reason we can still live in Park Slope, because we’ve owned the house forever. If we didn’t, we’d have to move away. It would be too expensive, especially for a brownstone like this. Brownstones are these skinny houses one right next to another, and they’re tall, four floors high usually, or three. We have three, like most of the ones on our block. In the basement, or really, like, the ground, is the kitchen and the dining room, and that’s where Nanny spends most of her day. That or in the garden right out the back door. She used to go out there to smoke, but now she just goes out to look. She says she needs air.

  Right above that is the living room and the library, which sounds very fancy, but it’s not. It’s mostly books Jock had about fixing things and an encyclopedia from 1983. Occasionally Mom adds something of her own to the library, like Eat, Pray, Love, which she was obsessed with three years ago. She got so into it that Nanny and I really wondered if she was just going to run away someday and go Eat, Pray, and Love all by herself, leaving us behind. She made us watch the movie too. At least twenty times.

  I get to keep my records in there.

  Above the living room and library is Nanny’s room. She has her own bathroom and sitting room, which only she sits in. Above that is Mom and me. Which means mostly just me. Mom uses her bed maybe four hours a night—maybe. And that’s if she makes it up here at all. Usually she falls asleep on the couch or even at the kitchen table, and then she’s off again. Maybe she does need some time to Eat and Pray and Love.

  “So what is it? What are you about today?” Nanny yells up at me.

  “I’m going to shower first,” I yell down.

  “Sounds good, then, but when you’re dressed, come here to me now.”

  “All right.”

  Mom and I share the bathroom on the top floor, so I have to walk through her room to get to it. For a little time, when Mom was with my dad, Nanny and Jock made our floor an apartment and rented it out. My room used to be a pantry. It’s lucky they kept the bathroom, otherwise we’d all have to share a shower with Nanny, and that is a sacrifice none of us are really up to make. When I walk through Mom’s room, it’s always really still and the bed is always made. Nanny makes it every day. She wants things to be nice for Mom. All of us do. Mom works so hard, and she’s seriously the nicest person ever. She deserves a nice bed, even if she barely uses it. And a clean bathroom, which is my job.

  I love to take a really long, really hot shower, the water on me, and the steam. I like it so much, I sometimes forget to wash. Sometimes I play music, but mostly not. And definitely not today. Three yells and a come down to me now from Nanny means quick in and out. In fact, as soon as I turn off the water, I hear, “Ducks, come down to me now. Your friend from up the road is here.”

  My friend from up the road is usually Sophie, but it could mean anyone. “Up the road” to Nanny can mean anywhere in any direction away from the house. I need to get down there as soon as I can, before Nanny starts talking to whoever it is. She’ll talk and talk about a lot, and it all teeters on a little rude. She’s not actually rude, she’s really lovely, but the loudness doesn’t help her. So I dive into my jeans, sucking in deep to button them quick, throw on a shirt, and run down the stairs two at a time without any socks.

  I can hear Nanny asking about her mother, so I know it’s Sophie. I can hear her yell to Sophie, “Here he comes bounding down like a bull. You know, Ducks, this house is one hundred years old, and I’d like it to be around for at least another.”

  Sophie is sitting at the table with her curly hair hanging off the back of her chair. I stop. I know it’s my friend. And at the same time I don’t know if it’s my friend. I’m nervous all of a sudden and very aware of my bare feet. And I’m out of breath, which I hate. So I take a minute, and do the thing that I always do when I’m nervous in the kitchen. I twiddle with the rope that holds Jock’s TV on top of the refrigerator.

  “Stop that Right Now!” Nanny screams, and comes over and swats my hand away from the knot. Sophie turns around and looks at me and smiles but knows I’m in trouble. “So help me, if that comes loose and falls, you’ll be apologizing to Jock in person.” Nanny means this as a big threat, because Jock is dead. He has been for two years, and the only time she mentions it is when she’s threatening to kill me.

  I smile back at Sophie, and try to pretend that the crazy Irish lady who just threatened my life is just insane but harmless, and that everything else is fine, but we both know it isn’t.

  “Where’s your socks?” Nanny laughs. “He must have been too excited to see you, dear. He ran down in bare feet! Well, say hello, won’t you? Standing there like your jaw’s come off its hinges.”

  “Hey,” says Sophie.

  “Hi,” I say back.

  “What are you up to?” Sophie asks.

  “Nothing hardly.”

  Nanny chimes in, “The little lord just got out of bed.”

  Sophie laughs because she’s nice and I think she really does like Nanny. Or at least I thought she did, before I wasn’t invited to her birthday. Maybe she hates us both. Now I know nothing.

  “Well, do you want to hang out?” Sophie asks.

  “Sure, where do you want to go?”

  “You can stay for a bit, if you want, and I’ll fix you something,” says Nanny.

  “You don’t have to, Mrs. Flynn,” says Sophie.

  “You need to eat, the two of you. And Ducks still needs socks. It’ll take no time at all. Go on up, and I’ll bring something up to you,” Nanny yells as she waves us out of the kitchen.

  I take Sophie up to the living room, and it’s strange because we don’t say anything to each other and we’re always saying something, lots of things to each other all the time. Or we used to. But now, we just go up and sit there. The living room is really bright from the big windows and pretty in an old-fashioned way, I guess, but it’s nothing to talk about. Sophie sits on the couch and crosses her legs under her, and I sit on the floor. Totally. Silent.

  Then, “I could put on a record?” I ask. Just hoping for something to happen. Anything really to get rid of this awful quiet.

  “Sure, if you want.” Sophie smiles.

  “Or we can put on something you want. Off your phone? I can hook it up
,” I say, smiling at her, hoping she’ll smile back, which she does, but I guess I was hoping too that she would mean it. All the silence isn’t helping. I take her phone and hook it up, so at least the room isn’t so awful and quiet. Some terrible pop music blares out of the speakers, but the room still feels the same.

  Sophie says, “Sorry I haven’t been around. I stayed at Allegra’s last night. And the night before, it was so weird.”

  “Weird, like good weird or weird like weird weird?” I ask.

  “I mean, I like Allegra,” says Sophie. I know you do, Sophie, you like her more than me now. Why don’t you just say it?

  But all I say is, “Okay.”

  “And I know you don’t.” Sophie laughs. “It’s fine, and she’s like, whatever, I get why. But she’s sort of funny and her house is really fun.”

  “Is it the ‘Best Evah’?” I ask.

  Sophie laughs at this, her good laugh, her my laugh. It makes me feel really good just hearing it. And when I look at her, she’s playing with her hair like she always does and all that quiet that followed us up the stairs is gone. It’s just me and Sophie, like always. And then, just as quickly, it’s not.

  “I feel really bad,” Sophie says.

  “Why?” I say. I mean, I know why, know why exactly, but I want her to say it.

  “Ellen told me she told you about the makeover thing,” Sophie says, still playing with her hair and really trying not to look at me. “And I don’t like that at all, because, I mean, I wanted to talk to you about it.”