by Beth Ain
and he himself will wear an apron and we might even
get a real, live cat in an apron on the stage,
and won’t that be funny, if a cat is in an apron,
standing in a row with us,
Mrs. Johnson says.
We laugh and gasp at this.
But oh! When Jackson Allen sings mommies are people
we are silent.
Jackson Allen saying mommy
is all I can think about.
A bully saying mommy is as funny as a cat in an apron
except not in a ha-ha way
but in a silent way.
Jackson Allen singing the mommies are people part of
the “Parents Are People” song
(and he sings it well)
is all I can think about
until he throws down his sheet of paper with the
words on it and Mrs. Johnson says
Stick with it, buddy.
Turns the whole thing on its head if a young man sings
this part.
Young man.
Ha.
Between the real, live cat and this,
I’ve never been more glad to have a music teacher like
Mrs. Johnson.
Mrs. Johnson is a genius.
Mom makes us eat dinner together because of the
news about Quinn.
She brings me home a big bag of Jelly Bellys, which
are just about my favorite thing in the world, and I see
that the bag is heavy on the watermelon ones.
Thank you, I say in a whisper.
I want to yell thank you out loud at the top of my
lungs, but that would be like celebrating and
I am afraid to celebrate something like an abundance of
watermelon Jelly Bellys when Quinn is in the hospital.
I decide I will collect all of the watermelon Jelly Bellys
and save them until she is better,
until we can eat them together.
But then James brings up summer camp,
and the same way I am afraid of school projects,
I am afraid of sleepaway camp,
of meeting friends who you only get to have
for a few weeks.
The one exciting thing about it is the possibility that
I might meet my twin,
like in The Parent Trap,
and then we could switch lives for a while.
But now I watch James leaning his chair backward,
teetering the way he does,
and he gets a mean look.
Didn’t I have a friend
at that awful camp?
he starts to say.
And I know what he’s talking about and
I want him to stop.
James, my mom says, shaking her head
in my direction.
Yeah, I did, he says anyway.
And he was fine all summer and then we started getting
those letters from his mom.
James, my mom says again.
Stop it, I say now, into my spaghetti and meatballs.
My hand is holding on tight to the bag of jelly beans,
like it’s a stress squeezie ball.
Stop what? he says.
Mom, what was his name?
STOP IT! I yell now, the way I’ve wanted to yell
all week.
The way I’ve wanted to yell since two years ago,
or maybe since forever.
STOP!
The one who died, he says anyway,
of cancer.
I scream and I throw the bag as hard as I can
at the wall,
and there are jelly beans everywhere but I don’t
stay to watch,
to see where they settle.
This is not the same, Izzy, my mom calls after me.
It is not the same.
I go to my room and I feel sad
and sorry.
Sad that James’s camp friend,
whose name was William,
whose name I will never forget,
died.
I remember the letters and the picture of him with
no hair.
I remember that my mom cried when she got the
final letter and that she was worried about how James
would feel.
I remember that James shrugged and walked away.
I feel sad about that.
And sorry about a million other things,
but mostly because I threw the Jelly Bellys.
I’m really sorry I won’t have the watermelon Jelly Bellys
to give Quinn
when she’s all better.
I have never been mad at James before now,
not even when I should have been.
Like when we were much younger and playing airplane
and I was balancing him on my feet.
I was supporting him all by myself.
It was exciting.
He was flying.
Until he wasn’t.
I let go, I guess.
Wasn’t as strong as I thought,
I guess.
And his knee landed in the middle of my stomach.
In the spot that makes you stop breathing.
I still remember what it felt like,
that sucking feeling and how scary it was.
And I remember that my dad walked in right then,
unfortunately.
I wasn’t mad at James,
but he was.
Or maybe he was mad at something else,
like my mom says,
and not at us.
And the mad mostly simmers, she says,
like the meat on the stove
on taco night.
But sometimes
it boils,
and sometimes it burns.
He picked up James,
boiling over,
I think.
You want to know how that feels?
But I didn’t want James to know how it felt.
I was okay with him not knowing.
And Dad swung him—
ALMOST SWUNG HIM—
across the arm of the sofa.
I breathed finally when he put James back down
and I was still the only one in the room
who knew how it felt.
We were back to a simmer.
That is why it wasn’t so bad that Dad moved out.
Why we could all breathe easier
once he was gone.
But it was important to me
to tell the counselor
that I was not mad at Dad,
not really mad at James,
not upset with Mom.
I was okay.
I just wanted everyone else
to be okay too.
But we’re here because of Quinn, he says—
this counselor, who Mom thought I should talk to,
who works for the school, and who is
free and available,
and a great resource.
Because your mom is worried that you are worried, he says.
Mom is worried because you’ve lost a lot, he says.
I’m not worried, I say, but he is looking at me hard,
the way grown-ups do when they want proof.
I haven’t lost anything, I say.
The divorce is a loss, he explains.
The divorce is a change, I say, not a loss.
He smiles
the way grown-ups do when you say something that
makes sense.
Even if it’s a relapse, I say,
we’ll get through it.
I like Quinn’s mom so much I copy her.
That’s all the guidance I need.
In the name of science
we are investigating the way things change.
My teacher says change is caused by a catalyst.
Jackson “FINGER SL
AMMER” Allen is my partner.
Into the test tube, Jackson pours more of the stuff that
makes things fizz,
and a little more,
too much of it.
I eye the teacher
because I am a rule follower and Jackson is not and
she is not looking so I don’t stop him from pouring in
a little more
and we watch it bubble up
before our eyes.
I’m afraid to touch it but I do.
I scoot my test tube in the direction of Jackson.
In the name of science.
And there it goes!
Up and up until a little poof.
A spitting, oozing poof of stuff,
matter,
all over Jackson’s face.
I snort.
I laugh so hard
I fall off my chair.
I get back up and try to record my findings.
Next to catalyst, I write
Jackson.
Miss Hall who is now Mrs. Johnson
wants us to sing in rounds.
It is her way of making the show her own.
Our own.
It sounds pretty,
the circular way we are singing,
looping in and out of each other’s place in the song
until we sing again
all at once.
Looping the way my dad does
all around the hospital
when he makes his rounds,
visiting the patients who do not know that he has ever
had a temper at all.
That he grits his teeth sometimes in a way that
makes me feel
not afraid
but sad
that he is mad.
But now,
and maybe because he is away from us
and closer to Stephanie,
he is more like he is with his patients.
Patient.
This is the place in the round
where I want to say that Dad,
just because he has a temper,
just because he has lost his temper
once or maybe twice
in the past,
is coming around
more and more.
Even called me today to say that he stopped in
to see Quinn,
that he chatted with her mom,
that she was doing great,
that it probably wasn’t a relapse,
that she has the flu,
that she will be okay.
And then
he asks if I’m okay.
Me.
I smile into the phone and say uh-huh.
This is the part
where he admits he is a doctor
and a father
all at once.
One of the FOUR ANNOYING BOYS put a note in
my backpack
and it had to be unfolded and
unfolded and
unfolded,
otherwise it would have just stayed a tiny little triangle
forever.
Instead it was this:
An acrostic.
It seems like this could be written by the
FINGER-SLAMMING,
MEDUSA-CALLING
Jackson Allen.
Someone wanted me to believe that he wrote it.
Someone who follows after Jackson
like he is the PRESIDENT OF THE
FOUR ANNOYING BOYS CLUB
or something.
But Jackson Allen did not write this poem.
If someone wanted me to believe that,
they would have to do a better job.
Jackson Allen, who I have known since kindergarten,
who my mom used to call cute because of his dimples,
has always been, ever since kindergarten,
the best speller in the class, which I know for a FACT
because I am always the second-best speller.
And when you are the second-best at something,
you always know who is the first-best.
So this note, unfolded into the shape of a rectangle,
was written by someone else
who is not even in the top ten spellers.
Mite?
He should have to write it 100 times on
the whiteboard.
Might might might might might might might…
Until he learns that if you are pretending to be
someone else, you MIGHT want to
shape up in the pretending department.
I saw on TV that when a person says something nice
to you,
you should accept.
You should say
Why, thank you.
You should do this so you appear confident
even if you are not.
Even if you don’t think you are funny or smart
or a little bit pretty.
But she didn’t say what to do if the compliment comes
in the shape
of something else.
I step on the scale and back up.
When she puts the metal stick on my head I look
sideways at my mom,
who is clapping her hands
for my achievement.
Two whole inches and one quarter inch since last year.
Niiiice, Mom says. Way to grow. Get it? Grow?
I get it.
I try not to laugh at her because she can be so
EMBARRASSING with her clapping and
snorting when things are funny to her
and only to her.
I laugh anyway.
The doctor takes the cold stethoscope to my back first
and then to my chest.
I laugh at the cold.
Laugh again when she pushes on my belly,
takes a peek under my gown,
to see what’s what.
To see if anything is doing yet.
Mom’s smile is bright and hopeful,
like she’s wishing for something,
but I don’t know what.
The same way I don’t know what I am wishing for.
Don’t know if I am for the what’s what
or against it.
Lilly with two l’s has two of something else
too.
I try not to look,
try not to straighten out her shirt where it bunches
around her bra.
A real bra,
not a tight half tank top,
like I wear some days
when my shirt is too loose,
making me feel too loose
underneath.
You are exactly where you should be, kiddo,
the doctor says.
Not too fast,
not too slow.
Just right.
My mom gives me a big squeeze before we get in the car.
Great checkup, baby! she says.
And I realize
we were wishing
for the same thing.
We watch some more of the Free to Be…You and Me
video at the end of school today. There are still some
parts we haven’t seen.
We’re working on the “Sisters and Brothers” song for
the show, so Mrs. Soto thought we might like to see
the part where Marlo Thomas interviews all these
1970s-looking kids about their sisters
and brothers.
They say funny things about their brothers hitting
them in the face,
which isn’t so funny in real life but seems funny in
this video.
Reminds me of playing the card game
bloody knuckles with James when I was much younger
and so was he.
The loser of the game gets their knuckles rapped with
the whole deck of cards and it is supposed to hurt,
if yo
u’re playing for real.
It’s a rule.
We’re no pretenders, James and I.
We are card game rule followers.
James made it hurt when I lost,
and I made it hurt back when he lost.
And it was a by-the-rules game of bloody knuckles.
No pretending.
We were so proud of ourselves,
even if Mom was not proud of us
at all.
We mopped up our knuckles with wet paper towels and
watched the blood spread into the watery paper and we
creeped each other out for a long while,
laughing and annoying Mom.
Something tells me Marlo Thomas would not approve
either.
She keeps asking these kids
over and over
if they like their sisters and brothers and they all keep
saying no
and laughing.
We’re not supposed to like them is what I think when
I watch this.
Or we’re not supposed to say we do.
It’s a rule.
After the interview, a whole big group of grown-ups
get together and sing and clap about brothers and
sisters and
ain’t we lucky, which just sounds so funny because
who says ain’t?
When we pack up our things to leave for the day
I ask Lilly
if she likes her brother or sister
and she says she doesn’t have one
and that she wished she did.
Brother or sister? I ask.
A big brother, she says.
They know everything and
they take care of bullies for you, she says.
I think of something the little kid in the interview
says about his brother
near the end.
Sometimes you’re good to me and sometimes you’re bad,
but I love you.
Something no one would ever say in real life,
if you’re playing by the rules.
I walk by James’s room and the door is closed and we
haven’t done very much talking to each other since he
brought up William,
since he couldn’t even remember William’s name.
He spends most of his time with the other teenagers
anyway,
or behind his locked door
with headphones on.
Usually I slow down in front of his room and maybe
I hope he’ll open up,
unlock, and let me in.
Usually, but not today.
I hurry by, to my room.
Hey, he says, standing at my door,
where he usually never stands unless I beg him to wait
until I am ready,
for him to turn off my light for me
at bedtime,
his finger on the light switch plate from my grandmother
from Pennsylvania,