by Kari Luna
“No way,” I said. “If I ate one, the strings would stick in my throat and I’d choke and die.”
“You’re so dramatic,” she said, smiling. “Maybe we should watch Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?”
“I’m in more of a Tim Burton mood,” I said.
“Of course you are.”
Mom picked up an egg roll with her chopsticks, dipped it in sauce and brought it to her lips. She used to be a dancer, which explained the graceful thing, but it was annoying. If I’d tried that, the egg roll would have dropped on the floor halfway to my mouth.
“How about an Asian film?” she said.
“Too predictable.” I nodded at the cartons littering the table.
“Then you pick,” she said. “I don’t care what we watch, I’m just glad you survived your first day. Sure you don’t want to tell me about it?”
“Amazingly sure,” I said, erasing the day by shoveling noodles into my mouth. “How about Roman Holiday?”
“Perfect!” Mom said. “Audrey goes with everything. Could you pass the pork?”
|||||||||||
I woke up with my cheek stuck to my arm, courtesy of the lo mein sauce. At some point, I’d eaten so much I laid my head on my arms, which were on the coffee table, and fell asleep. I grabbed a napkin, cleaned myself up and rubbed my eyes. The movie was still playing, but it was near the end, the press conference scene where Audrey goes back to being a princess and Gregory Peck asks questions like nothing happened. I was thinking about how hot he was for an old guy when Walt plopped down on the floor beside me.
“Isn’t this a great movie?” he said. “You can’t get better than Hepburn. I could look at her face all day.”
“Could you keep it down?” I pointed to Mom, sleeping with a carton of moo shu in her lap.
Walt pretended to zip his lip with a big black and white paw.
“What are you doing here?” I asked.
“You missed me,” he said. “Besides, wherever egg rolls appear, so do I.”
Walt grabbed the last one, dunked it in the remains of the plum sauce and tossed it into his mouth.
“I haven’t had time to miss you,” I said.
“Okay, then I missed you,” he said. “Where’s the love?”
“More like where are your friends?”
“So many questions,” he said.
“And so few pandas,” I said. “Why is it just you? And why did you come to me, instead of the other way around?”
I usually popped into episodes already in progress, like when you hate the movie you paid for and sneak into another one. It was already playing, only now it was playing with you in the back row, confused about the plot but happy about the popcorn. The movie didn’t come to me; I went to it. But now a panda from the football field was in my house, eating all the egg rolls. Nothing about that could be a good sign.
“Allow me to formally introduce myself,” he said, twirling both chopsticks in one hand. “I’m Walt, your shaman panda.”
I didn’t know everything, but I learned about shamans in seventh-grade history. Shamans were messengers between the visible and invisible spirit worlds. They also had the ability to heal, which, judging from Walt’s chopstick drumming on the coffee table, wasn’t his forte.
“If you’re some kind of shaman, prove it,” I said. “Heal me.”
“You want to be more specific?”
“Make my episodes go away,” I said. “You’re charming and all, but I’d like to quit seeing things now.”
Walt stopped drumming, and Mom started snoring, softly, like someone running her hands up and down a set of mini blinds.
“That’s not how it works,” Walt said, speaking quietly.
“So enlighten me, enlightened one,” I said. “Are you a healer or what?”
“I am, but sometimes the healing is internal. I’m here to guide you, not make things happen or prevent things from happening,” he said. “I’m more like a guardian angel without wings. Unless they’re chicken wings, of course.”
He picked up a carton of fried rice and emptied it into his mouth.
“I didn’t ask for a guardian panda or shaman or whatever you are,” I said, standing up and pacing back and forth in front of the television. “I didn’t ask to see things or to move away from New York, but those things happened anyway. So here’s some guidance for you. Leave. I don’t want you here.”
But as soon as I said it, I knew it wasn’t true. Maybe having a giant, invisible shaman panda as my first friend here wasn’t the best choice, but maybe it was. Walt was in on the joke. I’d never have to lie to him, to tell him I had a headache when really I was just reeling from returning from an episode. I didn’t have to explain how scary it was to try to live on shifting ground, never knowing if I was safe in my own head, much less a math class. And if he wanted to guide me, as he said, or watch over me like some black and white furry angel, I was in no position to pass that up.
“I’m a jerk,” I said. “Also known as a brat, prima donna or pariah. I’m sorry. Peace offering?”
I handed Walt the small white bag from the middle of the table. It was the same bag that came with Chinese takeout in every city and contained the usual suspects: soy sauce, duck sauce that no one ever ate and two fortune cookies. Maybe that’s why Dad made Chinese food a part of our ritual. If you wanted to commemorate something, you couldn’t do much better than food that came with fate at the end.
Walt shook a fortune cookie into his paw and presented it to me.
“I know you didn’t ask for me,” he said. “But look at it this way: there is nothing you can tell me that will freak me out. No one else can see me. And the best part? You never have to come to me. I’ll come to you.”
“Plus, you have a killer smile and impeccable wit,” I said, giggling and taking the cookie out of his hand. I broke it in two and stuck a piece in my mouth. Stale mixed with vanilla.
“Depart not from the path that fate has assigned,” I read from the slip of paper. “You have got to be kidding.”
“What? I didn’t write it,” Walt said. “And I never used the word path, thank you very much.”
“But you’re going to,” I said. “If I let you be my shaman panda, Zen words are going to start popping out of your mouth like a slot machine.”
“Zen is in!” Walt said. He smashed his cookie on the table, sending pieces—and Balzac—flying around the room. I grabbed his fortune off the table and there, in tiny black letters, was his destiny. Even though it sounded a lot more like mine.
“A friend is a gift you give yourself,” I said. “That’s corny.”
“But true,” he said, sticking his paw in the plum sauce and then in his mouth. “Admit it. You know you like talking to me.”
I didn’t hate it. And even though he ate all the takeout, showed up without warning and was a panda, he didn’t stare or ask questions; he just accepted. Like I used to do with Dad.
“I’ll do a trial basis,” I said.
“Yes!” Walt said, throwing his arms in the air and shaking his butt around.
“But no more of that,” I said. “We only go-go dance around here. And no more sneaking up on me. I hate that.”
“Got it,” Walt said. “Mod dancing and a megaphone. Anything else?”
I thought about hugging him, partially to make sure he was real, partially to get lost in that black and white fur, but I wanted to be cooler than that. So I raised my knuckles and made a fist.
“Sophie Sophia, keeping it real,” he said, bumping his paw against my fist like an agreement. “I like it.”
I pulled my hand back, and Walt was gone. The only evidence that he’d ever been there was a panda butt imprint in the carpet and a chewed stick of bamboo next to it.
Mom sat up, rubbing her eyes.
“Did I hear you talking to someone?”
“Nope,” I said. “Must have been the movie. Or Balzac.”
I stacked cartons, attempting to clear the table and distract her with my impeccable manners.
“Sophie, are you seeing things again?” She yawned. “You can tell me. There’s nothing we can’t work out.”
And by “work out,” she meant move where no one knew us. Where no one cared.
“I was talking to Infinity,” I said, instead. “It was fascinating, as usual. Now I’m going upstairs to talk to Dreamland. I’ll tell you all about it in the morning.”
I tossed a handful of cartons in the trash and held my breath as I walked upstairs, hoping she wouldn’t figure things out. Praying, even though I never prayed, that she hadn’t heard me with Walt.
FIVE
Today was Thursday, the day that deserves to be kicked out of the calendar, completely. Most people loved Thursday because it was almost Friday, which was practically the weekend. But for me, Thursday was a reminder of something else: that day when the fun and games forgot the fun; when someone I loved terrified me; and when I ended up in one cop car, waving, while my dad rode away in another one.
|||||||||||
“It’s TYRANNICAL THURSDAY!” Dad said one Thursday, emerging from the basement in red long underwear. “And as the tyrant, I have decided that today we will go to the zoo in our pajamas.”
I laughed so hard chocolate milk sprayed out of my nose.
“It’s too cold for pajamas, Daddy,” I said, wiping my face on my sleeve. I was five, and the only thing I wanted more than going to the zoo was staying warm. I hated the cold. It was a phase I was going through.
“So we’ll warm ourselves with our minds!” he said, running circles around the table. “We’re the smartest people I know. If anyone can create heat with thoughts, it’s us!”
“Angelino, put some clothes on,” Mom said when she walked in.
“I would if I could,” he said. “It’s Tyrannical Thursday, and Sophie and I are going to the zoo in our pajamas.”
Mom poured coffee into her blue mug, the one with the chip on the side.
“Sophie has school,” she said. “You know that.”
“What can she possibly learn in a classroom that I can’t teach her? Am I right?”
He looked at me, and I nodded yes as he piled a waffle on my plate and poured a syrup smile on top of it.
“Of course she’s going to agree with you,” Mom said, ruffling my hair. “Sophie is nothing if not a fan of monkeys.”
“Which is why I’m taking her to the zoo,” he said.
Mom took a waffle off the plate and ate it plain.
“Fine,” she said. “But no pajamas. And wait until after school.”
“Deal!” Dad said, winking at me. “I don’t know why you worry so much.”
At the time, Mom knew something I didn’t: Dad was sick. Which meant he wasn’t the best person to take care of me. But that didn’t keep him from showing up at school at noon with a doctor’s note in one hand and a pair of pajamas in the other.
As we walked around the zoo, he told me his theories on why parrots mimic, why polar bears like ice and what makes elephants majestic. I was shivering but acted like I was fine until he stuck his arms through the bars, trying to catch a capuchin monkey. He wanted to take him home because, evolutionarily, the monkey was my brother, but the guards didn’t like that answer. They also didn’t like it when they asked him to “come with them” and instead of going, he pulled a stainless-steel eggbeater out of his jacket pocket and charged at them. Assault by scramble.
Before I knew it, he was sitting in the back of one of the police cars and I was sitting in the back of another, wrapped in a blanket. Scared. Sirens blared as they drove away, Dad waving frantically, me wondering if I’d ever see him again.
I knew Mom was mad because she kept yelling—at the police station, in the car and in the living room. I wanted to yell back and ask her why every time Dad and I were together, she had to ruin it. Now I understood it wasn’t the pajamas or the zoo that made her angry, it was all of it. Including a lot of things I never saw. But at the time, I thought if she stopped happiness every time it appeared, it would think it wasn’t welcome. And in my five-year-old mind, that meant it wouldn’t show up anymore.
|||||||||||
“Showing up is ninety percent of your grade,” Mr. Maxim said as I slipped into class. I was late because Mom had done the whole ambush-by-orange-juice thing. I hated it when she interrogated me over breakfast.
“Preferably showing up on time,” he said, looking at me while I checked out his red gingham bow tie. “Labs start next week, so until then, ponder what we covered today. Velocity, which is a vector measurement of the rate and direction of motion, has exciting possibilities.”
Mr. Maxim handed me the list of lab partners. I found my name and ran my finger directly across from it to find my probably better half: Finny Jackson. I had no idea who he was—who anyone was, really—but I hoped he was more into physics than the Urban Outfitters catalog, unlike my lab partner in San Francisco.
“There’s nothing more rewarding than asking a complicated question and coming up with an elegant solution,” Mr. Maxim said, tripping over a book and flying forward. As he caught himself on the file cabinet, I couldn’t help but wonder: was there an elegant solution for him?
“See you tomorrow,” he said as the bell rang. I grabbed my books and dashed out before Fab Physics Guy saw me. I spent the rest of the day dashing, hiding, ducking and avoiding. I knew I’d have to see him eventually, but it didn’t have to be today. Which is why I kept my head down and combined walking with ducking. Dwalking.
“Hi.”
I looked up and practically knocked Fab Physics Guys’ Buddy Holly glasses off his face.
“It’s Sophie, right? Sophie Sophia?”
I stepped back as people filed around us, heading for the real world.
“I have to go,” I said. “I’m going to be late for class.”
“The last bell just rang,” he said, grinning. “School’s out. But I don’t want to keep you. I just wanted to say hi, since we’re going to be lab partners. I’m Finny Jackson.”
Look up the origin of anyone’s name and you’ll find something familiar. Whether they’re born with it or grow into it, names oddly fit the people carrying them. Finny was probably short for Phineas, which means “oracle.” Hopefully the oracle of physics. And my name is two versions of the same name stuck together, both of which mean “wisdom.” Why I couldn’t just skip high school and go straight to college was beyond me.
“Pleasure to meet you,” I said, and then I curtsied. I had no idea why I did that.
“And you,” he said, bowing. “Are you secretly British?”
“The most British thing about me is my love of Monty Python and The Smiths,” I said.
“Me too,” he said, pointing to his T-shirt. It was vintage, from The Queen Is Dead album. I had seen one like it in a store in San Francisco and wanted to buy it and sew a pocket over the word queen.
“Nice shirt,” I said. And then, out of nowhere, I felt my friend-making mechanism kick in. “Are there any good parks around here? I’m dying for some scenery without lockers.”
“I know just the place,” he said. “And I wanted to give you this.”
He reached in his jacket pocket and pulled out a whistle on a chain. Walt’s whistle.
“Where did you find that?” I said, snatching it out of his hand.
“Near the football field where you dropped it,” he said. “You know, the same place where you saw me, ran away, came back and ran away again? All in the span of, like, fifteen minutes?”
“I was probably just lost,” I said, smiling, thrilled he hadn’t seen anything more than some wacky girl behavior. “So how about that park?”
|||||||||||
&nbs
p; We walked forever until the houses gave way to thick, glorious trees, a little lake and a path that wound in between it.
“It’s no Central Park, but it’s pretty cool,” Finny said. We’d been walking and talking long enough for me to know he had a love affair with New York. Just like I did.
“How can you like a place so much when you’ve never even been there?”
“It’s the mystique of it,” Finny said. “Broadway? Radio City Music Hall? Running into Ethan Hawke at a Starbucks? Truman Capote?”
“Capote was born in Louisiana,” I said.
“Whatever. He hung out in Greenwich Village, and he was fabulous.”
“He was,” I said. “So was Andy Warhol.”
“Oh, wow, did you know him?”
Two kids flew by on skateboards, followed by two jogging women with strollers.
“Um, hi,” I said. “We’re the same age.”
“Did your parents know him? Maybe he ate at your kitchen table, and you don’t even know it.”
“Doubtful,” I said. “My parents ran in different circles.”
“Which circles were those?”
I remembered hanging out in Dad’s office at NYU. Meeting Mom after work at Katz’s Deli. Seeing a matinee of The Lion King on Broadway with Mom, and The Donnas at a small club in Brooklyn with Dad. Sitting on our stoop, looking at the stars. Listening to Mom and Dad fight through the window.
“They ran in the smarty-pants academic circles” I said. “Dad was a theoretical physics professor at NYU.”
“Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God,” Finny said, hyperventilating.
“Breathe,” I said, patting him on the back. “Sit on the curb or something.”
“Quantum,” he said, panting. “String theory. It’s my life.”
“I know,” I said, looking down at his white Converse, which were covered in equations written in Sharpie.
“Why didn’t you tell me? Is your dad into M-theory? If your dad is involved in cutting-edge research—”
“He’s not,” I said, interrupting him. “He’s not on the cutting edge of anything.”