by Lev AC Rosen
“Yeah.” Dad smiles. “Yeah, of course. Your mom is from Berlin.” He pauses, bites into his burger while Nick eats another fry. “East Berlin,” Dad says, when he’s swallowed.
Nick furrows his brow. That means something, he knows. The eighties, and the big wall that was covered with graffiti and then came down, and the fall of communism, or the cold war, or something. He doesn’t remember, exactly. He’s not sure if it could have anything to do with Mom’s being locked up, either. He’ll have to google it tonight.
“Oh,” he says.
“She doesn’t like talking about it much. She came to America the first opportunity she could. Came to study anthropology. Met me.” He grins. “I told her I was another culture she could study.”
“Ew.” Nick rolls his eyes.
Dad laughs. “Everything was new for her here, back then,” Dad says, more solemnly. “She saw everything as wonderful, even the bad stuff, because she could learn from it. It’s why I fell in love with her.”
Nick looks down at his plate. “Then why did she want to go to the home?” he asks. Damn. He didn’t mean to say that. The words were just bubbling in his mind and overflowed for a moment. His body goes numb, and he feels like he’s about to get pushed over a cliff edge and is just waiting for the fall. He hopes this won’t ruin his plans, won’t make his dad tighten up and lock the truth further away.
Dad sighs, and looks at the empty chair where Nick’s mom should be sitting. “It’s complicated, Nick. But your mom wanted it, in her lucid moments. I…didn’t want her to go, but I know she had to.”
“Lucid moments”—Nick doesn’t know what that means. All Mom’s moments are lucid, by checklist standards. He’s been keeping track. Still, Dad doesn’t seem mad. He’s even opening up a little. Maybe he feels guilty. Nick peels away some of the moisture on his soda cup with his finger, trying to look bored.
“Had to?” he asks as casually as he can.
“Your mom wanted to protect you. And…I do, too.”
Nick scowls at the table—light blue, flecked with mica—and the silver napkin holder. It’s cheap, everything here is cheap. And he knows he’s not getting anything else out of Dad. Once they say “protect” it all goes to nonsense and “You’ll know when you’re older.” Why not just chant Your fault, Your fault over and over?
“Protect me from what?” Nick says loudly enough that the people at the next table look over for a moment. He doesn’t care. “And why didn’t you ever ask what I wanted?”
“Because you don’t get to decide,” Dad said softly. “None of us do, really.”
Nick looks up, ready to yell some more, but he sees Dad’s eyes are wet, like he’s about to cry, and Nick feels himself blushing, and he quickly takes a drink of his soda. The bubbles beat against his throat like an onslaught of arrows. He keeps sucking through the straw, inhaling the soda because he’s not sure if he can breathe otherwise, and his chest feels squeezed empty. The straw makes dry sucking sounds at the bottom of the empty cup, and Dad doesn’t tell him to stop, like he normally would. He shakes the cup so that the ice clatters against itself, like plastic jewelry falling on the floor and breaking.
“Next year, let’s go somewhere else,” Nick says.
“Okay,” Dad says.
• • •
At home, Nick looks at the game again but then turns on his computer and googles Berlin. A city divided down the middle by a wall. It reminds him of Wellhall.
When he’s read all the Wikipedia articles and some others on the Berlin Wall and East and West Berlin, he realizes it’s late, and he finishes his homework and goes to bed without turning on the game. He lies in the dark, facing the game and feeling bad that he didn’t meet up with Nat. But how would they do that, anyway? He wouldn’t even know it was her.
THE NEXT day is real school, full-length classes, teachers asking questions, being expected to do math on the board in front of the class. Nick is tired but tries to pay attention. He mostly succeeds. He has English and gym and math and bio before lunch, and he can do all that, but when he goes into the lunchroom—five times the size of the one at Lincoln—he realizes that he has nowhere to sit. He’s an embarrassing teen movie cliché come to life, and worse than that, he’s still standing there, and people are starting to look at him. The entire cafeteria murmurs like a swarm of insects, all talking about him. He swallows slowly because his throat feels dry.
“Severkin!” shouts a voice. He turns. Nat is here. Eyeliner, hair in a huge beehive behind a lime headband. She waves him over, and he takes a deep breath. She’s sitting with a few other kids, all talking among themselves, but she turns away from them when Nick sits down.
“You can call me Nick at school,” Nick says. “Sorry I didn’t turn on the game last night. I forgot my parents always take me out to eat the first day.”
“That’s okay,” she says, peeling an orange. She seems to mean it, too, which Nick is thankful for. “Hey, guys, this is Nick,” she says to the rest of the table, who nod or wave. Nat says their names, but Nick forgets them within minutes. “He plays the game,” Nat says.
“Oh, thank god you found someone else to talk to about it,” one of the guys says, and everyone at the table laughs, but in a friendly way, and Nat smiles, too, before sticking her tongue out at them. Then she turns back to Nick.
“Also,” Nat says, popping an orange slice in her mouth, “I teased you about it before, but you really wouldn’t know if it was me. So you could have just, like, walked away or ignored me. On the hardcore server, you can’t talk out of character at all.”
“Yeah,” Nick says. “That’s why I like it. I can still get lost in the world.”
“Escapist.” Nat nods. “Well, I picked a character to play on the hardcore server. Elkana. She’s a troll sorcerer. And you’re Severkin, right?”
“Yeah. Gray elf treasure hunter. A troll sorcerer?”
“I like to play against type,” Nat says with a grin and a shrug. “So, you want to meet up in Wellhall?”
“I haven’t even gotten there yet. But I’m headed there now.”
“Okay, cool. There’s a pub in the overcity called the Silver Roof. Let’s try to spend time there between quests. We’ll be sure to meet up eventually, right? Why don’t you text me when you’re close? Then we won’t wait forever for each other.”
“Okay,” Nick says, nodding. She takes out her phone and Nick takes out his and they quickly exchange numbers. Nick realizes he hasn’t eaten anything yet and stares at his soggy, Dad-made salami sandwich, then takes a bite. It’s not as awful as he’d expected, but still pretty bad.
“It’s so well thought out, the way they did it. I wish they’d given more interviews and stuff, and told us where they got their ideas. They say they’re going to talk all about it for the first time at the GamesCon in the city in a few weeks.” She leans in close, conspiratorial. She smells like oranges. “I got tickets. My parents are taking me.”
Nick swallows, and he can feel his eyebrows rise.
“Jealous?” Nat asks, grinning widely.
Nick nods. “Will you…tell me about it? After?”
“Absolutely!” Nat says, acting like it was a foregone conclusion. “You’ll probably be begging me to shut up about it.” She twirls a small pendant she’s wearing in her fingers.
“Only, no spoilers,” Nick says. “I don’t usually pay too much attention to the behind-the-scenes stuff—it’s harder to really get lost in the game that way—but I feel like I’m going to have so many questions.”
“You want to sit before the sages of the Forever Quest?” Nat asks.
“Yeah,” Nick says. He imagines the sages—really Canadian tech nerds and artists—talking about inspiration and culture the way Mom talks about the mythical basis of the game when she watches him play it. That thought suddenly makes his throat dry and his cheeks hot, and he drinks some of his juice. He should be trying to bring Mom home, and here he is talking about the game, almost forgetting the trouble she
’s in.
“It’s such a good game,” Nat says. Nick nods. He tries to smile. He can’t do anything for his mom here, and he doesn’t want Nat to see how upset he is. He doesn’t want her to know about his mom.
“The game play is amazing,” he says. “I feel like I’m there.”
“Yeah,” Nat says, nodding. “I want to talk about the main quest and my favorite side quests, but I don’t want to spoil anything, either.”
“I was thinking the same thing. I don’t want to ruin anything, so I don’t want to ask you anything.”
Nat laughs. “Okay, okay. Let’s talk about something else, then….Um, you know what you’re doing for your history project yet?”
Nick looks down again, thinking of his mom. “Well, my dad has written all these books about the African American experience and the parts of history my ancestors were involved in,” he says.
“So you have it easy. Lucky,” Nat says.
“Well, I think I want to do my mom’s side of the family, though,” Nick says. “She was in East Berlin for the fall of the wall. I think that could be cool.”
“Your mom is white?” Nat asks.
Nick nods.
“You’re mixed, too!” She almost jumps out of her seat. “Another hapa.”
“Oh, now she’s never going to leave you alone,” one of the other kids at the table says, and the rest of them laugh. They’re all white, and Nick notices that this time Nat doesn’t smile and act as though the joke is funny.
“Hapa?” Nick asks.
“It’s the Hawaiian word for half,” Nat says, shaking her hands in front of her like she’s having a fit. “People who are multiracial, though, they’ve taken it on as a sort of community word, to express what it’s like. Don’t you feel like you’re not really part of either side of your family?”
Nick shrugs. “I think I’m just black,” he says.
“Half black,” Nat corrects.
Nick takes another bite of his sandwich, his leg bouncing a little. The other kids aren’t paying any attention to them now. “I don’t think my dad would agree.”
“Sorry,” Nat says, calming down. “I don’t mean to tell you what you are. You’re what you are. I just got excited. I’m the only hapa I know, in real life. Mostly I just talk to others online. My dad is Jewish, and my mom’s Chinese,” she adds. “ ‘Nat’ is for Natalie Asher-Woo.”
“That’s cool,” Nick says. “I mean, I guess you’re kinda right. I do sometimes feel like I’m not totally black. Or like my dad’s history has sort of eaten up my mom’s. That’s why I want to do this project on her side.”
“Well, I can give you the hapa spiel, if you want,” Nat says. She clearly wants to. It’s practically bursting out of her. It’s like he can see words pouring over the rim of her bottom lip, like an overflowing dam.
“Okay,” Nick says, because he thinks if he says no, she might cry. She smiles and takes a deep breath.
“Well, I guess I told you the basics. It’s half. Most people take it to mean, like, half Asian or Pacific Islander and half something else, usually white, but people of all mixed races are starting to use it, which I think is cool, ’cause we usually have more in common with each other—with other hapas—than we do with people who are totally one race. ’Cause, like, my mom’s parents, they all speak Mandarin when we go to visit them, and I know some Mandarin, but then they’ll notice me and they’ll start talking in English. And I think they talk about different stuff, too. Like, I always think they’re talking about me when I leave, like I’m not really one of them. And that doesn’t mean they don’t love me, ’cause I know they do. I’m just…different. And it’s the same on my dad’s side. My grandmother was surprised when she got the invitation to my bat-mitzvah. I was like ‘Why do you think I went to Hebrew school for five years?’ and she said, ‘I thought you were just trying to be more Jewish,’ like I was trying to study my eyes straight or something.” She takes a deep breath. “Sorry. I’m talking a lot.”
“She always talks a lot,” one of the other girls at the table says.
Nat rolls her eyes. “I do, though,” she says in a low voice.
“That’s okay,” Nick says, and for some reason he feels embarrassed, like his face is tingling. “I don’t mind you talking.” He looks down at his food. “And, I mean, I guess I know what you’re saying. I go to my dad’s readings, and it’s all the black people in the area, and they’re really nice, but I just sit in the back with my mom. They all come up to me and talk to us, too….” Nick tilts his head. “I mean, I’m black.” He shrugs. “I don’t think I’m really mixed the way you mean, sorry. But it’s really cool that you are. And I do get what you’re talking about. Maybe it’s different ’cause I’ve never met my mom’s parents. They died before I was born.”
“I’m sorry,” Nat says.
Nick shrugs again. “I never knew them,” he says, because what else is there to say? Also, my mom’s in a home for people with Alzheimer’s and dementia, and I think she’s scared more than anything, and it has something to do with my grandparents, but I’m not sure, and I know she shouldn’t be there. No. He takes another bite of his sandwich and holds it in front of him, studying the burned edges.
Suddenly a hand comes down and slaps his sandwich out of his grasp. He looks up into the laughing face of Charlie. A few other kids stand behind him. He and Charlie had been friends before last spring. Charlie is dressed differently now, with a sideways baseball hat over his blond curls, and an oversized red jacket.
“Hey, freak,” Charlie says, grinning. “Your mom learn about waxing yet? Or did she learn and then forget again?”
Nick goes cold. The kids behind Charlie laugh. He doesn’t even know some of them. But they know him, he guesses. They walk away, and Nick realizes he hasn’t moved, hasn’t responded, hasn’t stood up for himself or his mother. He feels like an ice statue just starting to melt. Nat is staring at him. So is everyone else at the table.
“People are drek,” Nat says. Nick wonders if she knows. He wonders if Charlie has told the whole school by now.
“I should go,” Nick says. His sandwich is flat on the table.
“Okay,” Nat says. She gives him PityFace, but only for an instant, and then she smiles. “I’ll see you in history next period, anyway.”
“Right,” Nick says. He gets up and leaves. He feels like the whole room is looking at him. He hears a burst of laughter from behind him and it goes through him like an arrow.
Outside the lunchroom he takes a deep breath. He goes to his locker and stares at it, trying to remember the combination. Eventually he does, and he gets his books out and goes to history. The room looks empty, the lights are out, but the windows are open and everything is gray in the light from outside.
“You’re early,” comes a voice from the teacher’s desk. Nick turns to see Ms. Knight, eating a salad from a plastic box. She hunches her shoulders slightly, looking embarrassed, then dabs at her mouth with a napkin.
“Sorry,” Nick says. “Can I just…sit here? Till class starts?”
“Sure,” Ms. Knight says, bobbing her head in a nervous nod. “I just…I’m going to eat, so I don’t know if I can talk. I mean, I can talk, but my mouth will be full, and that’s never polite, so if I don’t answer any questions, it’s just ’cause I’m chewing,” she says in a long rush.
“I don’t want to talk.”
“Okay.” She looks at him like she wants to say something else but then hunches her shoulders again and picks at her salad with a fork. She takes a few more bites, and Nick looks down at his desk and wonders if he’s going to go through all of junior high and high school as the freak kid with the freak mom. It was just one really bad day, at the end of spring, and he doesn’t know why he needs to be punished for it. It wasn’t his fault. It wasn’t her fault, either.
“I really hate salads,” Ms. Knight says. Nick looks up. “But I eat them, because I’m supposed to eat them, y’know?” She sighs. “I’m close with this wom
an—she’s studying to be a physician’s assistant and working as a nurse’s aide—real healthy type, you know? And she always eats salads.” She closes the plastic container and leans back over her chair and tosses it into the small trash bin behind her, glaring at it for a moment. “You’re Nick, right?”
Nick nods. He wonders if she knows, too. Do teachers listen to that stuff? Is it in his file somewhere?
Ms. Knight points at him suddenly, narrowing her eyes. Nick holds his breath. “Your dad is Lamont Reeves, right? I saw that in your file.”
Nick nods.
“So you’re going to have an easy time with this family assignment,” she says, grinning. “I mean, he pretty much wrote it for you.”
“I’m thinking of doing my mom’s side of the family,” Nick says softly.
“Oh? What’s her background?”
“She’s from East Berlin.” He sees Ms. Knight’s eyes widen slightly. “She was there when the wall fell.”
“Wow,” she says after a moment. “Have you asked her about it?”
“No,” Nick says, shaking his head. “I just found out, actually. She doesn’t talk about it much.”
Ms. Knight nods. “Well, if she doesn’t want to talk too much about it, don’t push. East Berlin was sort of a scary place, and it’s sometimes hard for people to talk about what it was like there. But there’s lots of research you can do.”
“I know,” Nick says. The classroom door opens and Nat comes in, holding some books to her chest.
“Hi, Ms. Knight,” she says. She sits down next to Nick, and her books fall with a bang on the desk. “You okay, Nick?”
Nick looks over at her. She’s drawing her eyebrows together like nuzzling sheep. He wants to smile and he wants to look away all at the same time, because she’s cute, and he wants to go to the movies and try putting his arm around her. But right now, she’s his only friend in the world. So he won’t. He decides right then. He won’t try anything that could lose him a friend. His only friend.