Caleb and Kit

by Beth Vrabel

  I thought about how Brad would bust on me about this. How Mom would squeal and say something horrible like, “It’s so cute to see you play.” How Dad would sigh. For a moment they slouched and squealed and glared inside my head. I closed my eyes, not that it made a difference. But I wanted to be like Kit, to see stories everywhere. I wanted to make up a new world, one where I wasn’t sick and she was magic. I wanted that more than anything. I do what I want, I told them in my head. Only I guess I muttered it out loud, too, because Kit grabbed my wrist and quietly asked, “What?”

  And suddenly, they were gone. Only Kit was there. I glanced at the bird and, I swear, it glimmered. For a moment, it glimmered and maybe, maybe it even had a monocle. “Did you see that?” I gasped.

  “What?” Kit’s eyes were circles.

  “Hang on!” I said, and sloshed to the far side of the stream where I had spotted it earlier—a chunk of peeling bark from a dying tree. It was as long as my forearm and kind of round. I wrenched it from the tree, planting my leg against the trunk to pull it free. A piece of the bark bent backward, revealing the smooth underside. It was just the size for my hand to grip it. I held the bark in front of me. “Behind my shield,” I called to Kit, who still stood by Mermaid Rock. “It’ll protect us from anything watching!”

  Close to three o’clock, I jumped over fallen logs and kicked rocks through the woods toward camp. I wasn’t sure what time Patrick would take the bus home from his internship, but the bus would pass by the route I should be taking home. I knew he’d be looking for me.

  I crouched at the edge of the woods—I figured it’d be reasonable to assume it took me a few minutes to get to the woods’ edge—and then darted out to the sidewalk when there weren’t any cars or buses approaching. Then, realizing I was still holding my shield, I ran back to the woods again. I stashed it in the hollow of a tree.

  Back on the sidewalk, I skipped a bit as I walked home. Not a big Wizard of Oz–style skip or anything; just a bouncy walk. I do what I want. The sentence echoed through my head like an earworm. I do what I want.

  I smiled and, okay, skipped a little, because here’s the thing: I had never spent an entire day doing what I wanted.

  Kit’s mom was at the house all morning, but never once tromped through the woods or called from the front porch for her. Her mom hadn’t even called out before leaving for work. When Kit and I sneaked through the woods to the outskirts of the house after lunch, her mom’s little VW bug wasn’t in the dirt driveway anymore. I was pretty sure that was a miracle—I’m not sure how much longer I would’ve made it in the woods without plumbing. (Thankfully, Kit had stayed outside to pile stones into what she called fairy huts while I used the bathroom and then pried open the window and fanned out the fumes.) Kit’s house was dark; the only lights were from tall lamps in the corners, and the floors were covered in boxes and piles of bags. Kit had pointed out the rooms on the way to the bathroom. “This one’s the parlor,” she had said as we passed a room with a huge fireplace and walls decked out in dark wood. But the chairs were still covered in sheets like no one was actually living there yet. It was like they hadn’t actually moved in.

  My mom, who lost her mind if someone so much as left a damp towel on the floor, had texted a bunch of times during the day. I assume you made it to camp ok was the first message. I wrote back, Yes. Because it was true. She had assumed I made it to camp okay. Around lunchtime, she texted again. Hope you’re enjoying your sandwich! Xoxo. I texted back: Yes. An hour later, she texted yet again. Don’t forget sunscreen! I texted back another Yes. When my phone buzzed again an hour after that (Don’t be afraid to let Ava know if you need to sit out an activity. It’s hot today!), Kit groaned. “Aren’t you sick of that? Just tell her to leave you alone!”

  I shoved the phone into my pocket without replying. “She just worries about me.”

  Kit leveled me, turning her eyes to slivers of ice. “You’re not a baby. Why do you let her treat you like one?”

  “You don’t understand,” I mumbled. I hadn’t exactly told Kit about having CF. I coughed a lot during the day, but she didn’t mention it or say anything about the pills I swallowed with lunch. I liked that about her. She treated me like I was normal, just like her.

  Aside from Mom’s texts interrupting our time together, no one was overseeing us, directing what we did or telling us when it was time to stop or start something else. It was just Caleb and Kit.

  Kit didn’t have anyone bothering her. Her mom just let her be. How cool would it be to have a life like that, where every day was like this? Where each morning you could figure out exactly what you wanted to do and then just do it?

  When I got to the driveway and spotted the curtains flick back, I realized Patrick was watching for me (and, I didn’t doubt, the clock); my skipping stopped. The smile faded from my face.

  My phone buzzed in my pocket. Make it home ok? Mom texted.

  I thumbed back, Yes.

  Another buzz. I’m proud of you!

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  That Friday, Mom came in my room about halfway through my nightly physio routine. She sort of flitted around, checking the nebulizer and the vest, then sat on the bed. For a second, she leaned back like she might lie down beside me the way she used to when I was younger. I raised an eyebrow at her and her back straightened again.

  “What?” The word was garbled through my nebulizer mask.

  Since I had actually gone to camp—first time since Tuesday—and she was sort of smiling at me, I was pretty sure she wasn’t there because I was in trouble.

  The day had stunk, too. A lifeguard spotted a toddler pooping in the pool, and we all had to evacuate the water. We spent the rest of the day playing kickball at the baseball field. I mean, most kids played kickball. Ava didn’t question when I said I wanted to sit in the dugout. She had assumed I hadn’t been to camp because I was sick, and I hadn’t corrected her. And, okay, I didn’t sit in the dugout. I sat under the benches of the dugout. From there, I could watch Brad and his dad setting off little homemade rockets in the other field.

  “Why are you hiding from Brad?” Shelly had sneered. “Isn’t he, like, your best friend?”

  “Why are you here at all?” I snapped back. “Is it because, like, you don’t have any friends?”

  I pushed aside thoughts about Shelly and camp, and shook the nebulizer container to see how much more time I needed under the mask. Already I could feel rumbling as the muck in my chest loosened.

  “Rough day at camp?” Mom asked. “You seemed distracted tonight.”

  I shrugged. I knew I had to go to camp once in a while if I was going to keep Mom unaware of how I was really spending the summer, but I wondered if Kit missed me as much as I had missed her today. I knew I wouldn’t have gone to camp if she hadn’t told me her mom was taking her shopping. It was Kit’s birthday.

  “Can I have an allowance?” I asked, pulling aside the nebulizer mask for a second, instead of answering Mom.

  Mom pursed her lips. “If you need anything, I’ll get it for you. Just tell me.”

  I just rolled my eyes.

  “What?” Mom asked.

  I pulled the mask aside again. “Maybe I don’t want to ask to buy stuff. Maybe I just want to do it.”

  Mom reached over and adjusted the mask so it was flush with my face. “I’ll think about it.”

  As if that would help me get Kit a present. Not that I had any idea what to get her even if I had money to buy it. Or a way to get to the mall.

  “I noticed you didn’t eat as much of your lunch today,” Mom said.

  I shrugged again. No need to tell her I actually ate more today than I had all week. The past two days, I had just divvied up my monstrous proportions with Kit. She hadn’t bothered to bring out the cereal box for lunch. We even had some leftovers for the bird; yesterday it swooped down for my PB&J crust before Kit’s hand was a few inches away from placing it on the rock.

  I pulled off the mask since the treatment had ended.
Mom didn’t say anything, just handed me a box of tissues from the other nightstand while I coughed.

  “You need a haircut.” Mom leaned forward, her hand ruffling my hair. “And your face—it has so many freckles! I’ve never seen you as tan as you’re getting this summer.” She smiled, but for some reason, I couldn’t smile back. I picked up the book I had pulled from the bookcases lining our hallway and opened it, not looking at her. I was hoping the book would give me ideas for what to get Kit for her birthday.

  “You haven’t read that book in a long time,” Mom said. I could hear the smile in her voice without looking up. “You used to say it scared you.”

  I didn’t tell her but some of the pages still did. The book was one from when Mom was a kid. It was huge—spanning my whole lap—and bound in a rough cream fabric. The cover had glossy gold letters spelling out The World of Faerie. Mom lifted the book from my lap and placed it on her own. “This one was always my favorite,” she said, turning to a page with a child-size fairy with black hair and blue eyes standing in the middle of a stream. “Hmm,” she added. “I never noticed this.” Mom pointed to the blackbird perched on a tree just over the fairy’s shoulder.

  “Me, either,” I whispered, my heart thumping. The child? She looked just like Kit. Okay, maybe the girl in the picture had curlier hair and didn’t have streaks of reddish gold through the black hue like Kit, but she had the same sort of face. The same crystal eyes. Maybe Grandmom the Seer of the Unknown wasn’t just a story.

  Mom teetered the book in my lap again, turning back to the page about goblins I had been reading. “Make sure you put this back on the shelf when you’re done reading it.”

  My mom is usually super generous. Like, if Girl Scouts selling cookies stopped by, she’d buy a whole twelve-box case. She barely makes enough money to pay all our bills, but she always puts at least a dollar or two in the donation jars at the grocery store. She volunteers for everything, even working once a month in a free dental clinic so poor families can have clean teeth.

  But all generosity stops at the bookshelf. Her books—especially the ones she’s kept from when she was a girl—never leave the house. And, believe me, anyone who bends the corner of a page instead of finding a bookmark better look out! Mom’s grandmother gave her this book for her birthday when she was nine. It says so in a little note Mom wrote to herself on the inside cover.

  I lifted the book a little higher to hide Mom’s face.

  “I haven’t seen much of you lately,” she said, and pulled the book down with an outstretched finger.

  “I’ve been here all night.”

  “Yeah, but for the past week, you’ve been in your bedroom except for dinnertime. You eat, and you come right back here.” She smiled at me. “I think I know what this is about.”

  Now I sat up. “What?”

  “Calm down!” she laughed, and pressed against my chest with her hand so I lay back on the pillows. I crossed my arms, figuring she actually had no idea. She looked way too calm to know I’ve been skipping camp all week, but my stupid heart shook like my vest was strapped to it still.

  Mom shuffled on the bed, sinking in a little more. “I think you’ve been avoiding me.”

  “Umpf.” I’m not sure what it meant, but that was the noise that somehow escaped my mouth. I couldn’t quite look at Mom. She was right—this whole week, as soon as I got home from “camp,” I just sort of hung out in my bedroom. At first it was because I was positive I’d get busted at any moment. But lately it was because I was sure if she looked too long at me, she’d see through my skin to my secrets. I mean, sure I’ve lied to my mom before. Who hasn’t? But about stupid things. Like nodding when she asked if I brushed my teeth (which technically isn’t even a lie, since at some point I had brushed my teeth) or maybe tossing out a bad quiz before she saw the grade. But skipping camp—that was a big secret. The kind that she wouldn’t just lecture me about. The kind with consequences. The kind that might mean she wouldn’t sit on my bed at night anymore just to smile at me.

  I do what I want. I focused on my book. “I kind of want to be alone,” I mumbled.

  Mom put her hand over mine. I yanked it back, not looking at her.

  She cleared her throat, then said, “I think this is about the date I went on last weekend. Ever since then, you’ve been acting so independent and quiet.” She bit her lip. “I appreciate your support; it’s more than I could’ve hoped for and much more than I expected. But just because I’m dating Derek doesn’t mean you’re even a smidgen less important to me. You’re still my priority, and I’ll always have time to take care of you.” She smiled. “I like taking care of you.”

  “Oh.” I flipped the page of my book even though I hadn’t focused on a single word. The corners of my eyes stung for no reason. Sure, Mom. Everything I’ve done all week is because of you. Because you went on a stupid date. Nothing could be going on in my life, right? Everything’s all about you.

  That’s what I wanted to say. What I really said was: “Derek, huh?”

  “Do you remember him?” Mom asked. She sounded so… so girly.

  I nodded and flipped another page. A couple times last summer, Dad dropped me off at Mom’s office after appointments. (I could count on Dad to drop me off places early just as often as he picked me up late.) The sound of the dentist’s drill made my knees watery, so I would sit outside.

  I met Derek—this broad man who smelled like grass and looked sort of leathery—then. He’s the one who told me the thing about trees, about how if they like each other, they grow in different directions. Derek also crouched beside me and watched a caterpillar nibbling on the edge of a leaf as if it were a soccer game. He told me caterpillars die a lot because kids pick them up and put them down somewhere else. They usually only eat one type of vegetation, so when they can’t find that plant again, they starve. I remembered thinking Derek was like a scientist, and maybe the smartest person I had ever met. “He cuts the grass around the dentist’s office, right?”

  She stiffened a little and crossed her arms. “A bit more than that, Caleb. He owns a landscaping business. He has employees who cut the grass around the office.”

  “Then how did you end up with him?” I mumbled.

  “Sometimes he cuts the grass, too.” She laughed. I didn’t. “I think you’ll be more comfortable if you got to know him a little better. Derek’s coming over for dinner tomorrow night, okay?”

  I rolled my eyes.

  “What?” she asked.

  “Did you really just ask me if it was okay? I mean, you’ve already invited him, haven’t you? I’m sure you told Patrick already.” A mean gush of satisfaction surged in my chest at Mom’s just-slapped-looking face.

  “If you want me to cancel—”

  “Do what you want, Mom.”

  She sat there another few seconds while I pretended to read my book. Finally, she got up. At the door, without turning around, she said, “What’s going on with you, Caleb? This attitude, it’s not you.”

  I turned off my light and rolled on my side, letting the book slip under my bed. She didn’t know me.

  Saturday morning, I dragged myself out of bed to do my physio routine. It was strange not having to rush to get to camp… or to plot how to dodge camp. Kit said she and her mom would spend all weekend celebrating her birthday, so I had no place to be. After finishing with the vest, I plopped down on the couch and grabbed the remote.

  “What do you think you’re doing?” Mom stomped down the hall, blue plastic gloves on her hands, one of which clutched a roll of paper towels, the other cleaning solution.

  “Watching TV,” I answered the obvious.

  Mom crossed her arms. Bad sign. “I thought about what you said, about wanting an allowance.” She dropped the bottle of cleaning stuff and paper towels into my hands.

  “Seriously?” I asked.

  “Both bathrooms. Don’t forget the mirrors.” Mom turned and walked back down the hall. “Or the toilets!”

  “How muc
h do I get for this?”

  “Payment dependent on quality,” she said without turning around.

  “Can’t I do it later? I just want to relax!”

  “Work first, play later,” drifted to me from the kitchen. “Welcome to the life of a working man!”

  “Never mind!” I shouted. “I don’t want an allowance.”

  “Too bad for you.” Mom popped her head into the hallway. “I’ve decided it’s good for you.”

  “Mom!”

  “Caleb!”

  She ducked back into the kitchen, singing along to the Joni Mitchell music blaring from her phone.

  “If this is how you think you’re going to get me to like Derek—slaving around the house cleaning for him to come over—you’re so wrong!”

  Mom turned up the music.

  Two things.

  First: Perfect Patrick did not have perfect aim because there was no way I was solely responsible for the disaster zone in the bathroom.

  Second: A nice crisp twenty-dollar bill in my pocket felt pretty awesome.

  “I’ll take you shopping tomorrow, if you want,” Mom said as she handed me the cash.

  “That’d be great!” I said. Something unfurled in my chest as I thought about how I’d duck Mom to get Kit a present for her birthday. And it wasn’t guilt. I was excited, I realized. I liked having parts of me that no one else knew.

  “Not going to happen,” said Patrick as he strutted by. “We have to go to Dad’s tomorrow, don’t you remember?”

  Excitement squashed.

  “Don’t you mess up my clean bathroom!” I shouted when I saw where he was headed.

  “You sound like me,” Mom said with a laugh. She patted my shoulder. “Maybe Kristie will take you shopping.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Yeah, probably for maternity clothes.”

  “What?” Mom’s hand on my shoulder clenched.

  “Don’t worry. They won’t have a baby until they’re sure the baby won’t be like me.”