Wake

by Abria Mattina

  I subtly close her office door as a preemptive measure, and then go to open the front door before Willa can ring the bell and tip Mom off to the presence of company.

  “Nice house,” Willa says by way of greeting.

  “Thanks. Nice shirt.”

  “Stop staring at my tits, Harper.”

  “Easy. There’s hardly anything to stare at.” That makes her laugh. It’s sort of nice that she can take a joke about her own body. I’m still trying to train Elise to do that. Over-sensitive teenage girls are annoying.

  Who can’t take a joke about their body?

  Oh shut up, you.

  “The snapdragons are in the kitchen.” I lead the way through the front room and down the hall towards the kitchen and our project planters. We pass by a row of family photos on the way and Willa stops by one. It’s the only picture of before that Mom wouldn’t let me temporarily take down: the last one before we left Ottawa, when we went for an outing as a family. Elise had long hair then, and Eric’s idea of an appropriate pose for a family photo had been to pretend to crush her like the Hulk.

  Willa gapes at the photo. “You’re a ginger?”

  “Kirk.”

  “Oh you poor soulless bastard.”

  I grab her by the upper arm and start to tow her away. I drag her into the kitchen and deposit her on one of the stools facing the island. “Stay.”

  “Do you treat all women like dogs?”

  “Only the bitches.” I sit down and open my textbook. I’ve taken Mom’s snapdragon planters away from the windows for this and lined them up along the island. We’ve got three pots of soil to play with; more if we separate the plants even further. The goal is to construct a microcosm of pollution before we compare it to actual pollution in the area. We have to do the math for our hypothesis and projections before we can decide how to violate the soil and in what order. I term that process ‘plant raping’ and Willa asks if tampering with the seeds counts as child molestation.

  Elise overhears the question on her way by and stops in front of the kitchen door. “What are you talking about?” she demands shrilly.

  “Church.”

  “Jem.” She stamps her little foot.

  “Go away.” She gives Willa and I this narrow look and traipses into the kitchen to get a snack with conspicuous slowness. About halfway she gives up on giving me a dirty look and simply glares at Willa.

  “Call me if you want milkshakes,” she says, and with her current expression even the kind offer sounds like a threat. I smirk and thank her and tell her to get the hell out.

  “Sorry,” I say when she’s out of earshot. “Elise is…protective.”

  Willa nods. “She knows I’ll kill you.”

  Willa: February 22 to 28

  Saturday

  The Harper house has a pretty sweet setup. I guess they’re affluent, him being a doctor and her being an architect. The house shows signs of being newly built. It’s missing some of the final touches on the exterior, and the interior fixtures are still shiny with newness. I fall in love with their kitchen the minute I see it. Granite countertops, a huge fridge, an island with a separate sink, cupboard space that goes on forever, and a gas range that looks pristine. They have a dishwasher too! If I lived here I would never leave this room. I have to really focus on homework to keep from gawking at their appliances—their toaster looks high-tech enough to launch its own space program.

  Jem and I are narrowing our hypotheses when a tall woman with black hair and more pencils than hands comes down the hall toward the kitchen. Three of these pencils are sticking out of her hair, one is behind her ear and another juts out of her pocket. She yells, “Are you kids getting hungry?” up the stairs, and when she turns she jumps at the sight of me.

  “You didn’t tell me we had company,” she scolds Jem.

  “She doesn’t count. Just pretend she’s part of the chair.”

  “It’s nice to meet you. I’m Willa Kirk.” I lean over the island and hold out my hand to shake. Mrs. Harper has a writer’s bump the size of a grape.

  “Call me Ivy. Would you like a sandwich?”

  Ivy declines any help to make sandwiches for an afternoon snack, but watching her go about it, I notice that she’s sort of scatterbrained. She loses her butter knife three times and mixes up what kind of sandwich she’s making for whom, but blunders through it with a smile on her face.

  “Mom’s got a one-track mind,” Jem says. “Architecture and nothing else.”

  “Oh hush,” she scolds him fondly. She slides a sandwich to me across the island. “What are you guys working on?”

  “Soc project.”

  Ivy’s eyes go wide. “So you’re his partner. We’ve heard so much about you.”

  “Really?” I look at Jem out of the corner of my eye. He’s concentrating awfully hard on his homework, but he still looks ready to die of embarrassment.

  “You’re the one with all the soup recipes, right?”

  “That’s me.” On that note, she invites me to work magic in her fantastic kitchen. I don’t even care that I’m making cancer food for my project partner—she has Wusthof knives! And her blender isn’t missing a blade! And Good Lord, you could store five dead penguins in that fridge!

  “It’s very irresponsible of you to distract a dedicated student, Mom,” Jem says. He’s still bent over our term project.

  I give him a look of warning. “Don’t you dare kill my buzz.”

  “Are you tired, honey?” Ivy puts a hand on Jem’s forehead. He leans away from her and insists he’s fine. “Your sister and her buddies are going to a basketball game tonight. I was going to get you or Eric to take her, but if you’re not feeling well…”

  “I’ll take her,” Jem declares firmly. There’s an edge of something like panic in his tone.

  “Is she an avid basketball fan?” I ask.

  “This week,” Ivy says with a laugh. “She’s trying to define herself.”

  Jem mutters something under his breath about hippies. He watches me from under lashless lids as I pour cooked vegetables and seasoning into the blender to puree. “What’s in this one?”

  “I’ll tell you after you eat it.” People carry far too many prejudices about food. They like much more than they think they do, if they don’t know what they’re eating.

  “I can’t believe he wants to eat,” Ivy says with a smile. She pinches her son’s side playfully and tells me that he’s put on three pounds, like he’s an infant going for monthly weigh-ins at the pediatrician’s office. Jem’s face flushes with a patchy blush of sheer embarrassment. What does Ivy expect me to say? Three pounds? Really? What does he weigh now, ten altogether?

  I slide a bowl of spinach soup his way and he mutters, “Thank you.”

  *

  For some reason, Jem is really eager to drive Elise and her friends to the basketball game at the school tonight. They’ve been doing fundraising for this thing all week. The donations are going toward literacy projects in Africa.

  “Mind if I tag along?”

  “Fine, whatever,” he answers distractedly. “Go put on a sweater,” he barks at Elise.

  “I’m not hot.” February is pretty early in the year to be wearing a tank top and short shorts.

  “I’m not taking you out like that.”

  “It’s the only thing I have in our school colors.”

  “Mom! Tell Elise to put on a sweater!”

  I sneak out the front door and head to my car. I’ll meet them at the game.

  *

  When Jem, Elise, and two of her friends arrive at the school, she’s wearing a sweater and he looks thoroughly annoyed. I wave and they make their way up the bleachers to the row of seats I’ve staked out for us.

  I’m not a big basketball fan. I’m just really, really bored with small town life. And four dollars of my ticket price goes to illiterate kids living in poverty, so why not?

  “Who the hell are you waving at?” Jem demands of his sister. It’s hard to believe, but
I think he might be an even bigger jerk to her than he is to me.

  “You don’t know him.”

  “Him?”

  “Number twenty-three,” her friend says slyly. Elise elbows her. Jem and I both start looking around for number twenty-three. He’s the guy with blond hair that is in desperate need of a trim and has the captain’s armband around his bicep.

  “Latham?” Jem reads off the back of his jersey.

  “I told you that you didn’t know him.”

  “What’s his first name?”

  “Kipp.”

  “His parents gave him a dog’s name?”

  “You’re so mean,” Elise says with a pronounced pout. “Just stop talking. No one wants to hear your negativity.”

  I laugh and Jem starts sulking.

  It’s an exhibition game for charity, which means there isn’t a lot in the way of actual game play. The boys’ and girls’ varsity teams are playing each other, but their plays consist of poking fun at the other side. Occasionally a few of the cheerleaders step in for players on either team, only to switch sides without warning. Whenever someone scores, the sound crew blasts music through the overhead speakers and the scoring team has to do a ten second victory dance. Cheating is encouraged. At one point there are two balls in play, and the ref hands out penalties in the form of entertaining punishments. Lucy Walker’s penalty is to crab-walk around the court to the sound of Depeche Mode, courtesy of a sadistic sound crew. This might have actually been worth the five bucks.

  Jem tries to hustle us out of the gym immediately when the game ends, but I’m in no hurry and neither are Elise and her friends.

  “Let’s hang out awhile,” she says. The sound crew is still playing upbeat music and the fundraising people are walking around with bins to collect additional last-minute donations.

  “No. Come on, let’s go.”

  “Just wait,” I say. “The parking lot is going to be chaos anyway.” He sulkily returns to his seat. Elise says she’s going to use the restroom.

  “Shit,” Jem mutters as she skips away down the bleacher stairs. Elise takes a pretty circuitous route to the washroom, stopping to say hello and congrats to a few of the players first. Particularly the captain of the boys’ team. From this range it looks like she’s trying to flirt. She’s laughing too hard and ‘casually’ touches his sweaty arm.

  “Great, she’s never going to wash that hand again,” Jem says.

  “Is that why you gave her a hard time tonight? She likes that guy?”

  “She’s obsessed,” Elise’s mousy little friend (whose name I can’t remember) interjects. “Like, obsessed.”

  “Like, more than she is with Harry Potter,” the other chimes in.

  Jem leans back in his seat and rests his feet on the empty row of chairs in front of us. “You’re so lucky you don’t have younger siblings.”

  Sunday

  When I wake up, Frank is gone and there’s a note on the fridge about snowmobiling with his buddies. I check the contents of the fridge and find all the lunchmeat and four of the rolls gone. He plans to be away all day, then. I shower, set up my homework at the kitchen table, and turn on the TV for background noise.

  Trigonometry blows. I’m saved from problem four, which looks more like a riddle to the universe than a math problem, by the phone. I lean back in my chair and grab the handset off the wall.

  “Kirk residence.”

  “Willa?”

  “Oh no.”

  “Bad time?”

  “I’m doing math.”

  “So you won’t mind being disturbed.” I can hear Jem’s smirk over the phone. I’m going to become rich and famous after I invent a device that allows you to remotely punch people in the face.

  “What do you want, Harper?”

  “My mom told me to call you. She wants to invite you over for lunch.”

  “To cook or to eat?”

  “Both.” Hmm, another day in Jem’s company…but his mom has a KitchenAid mixer…

  “Yeah, alright.”

  I show up at the Harper house with a few recipes folded in my pocket. Ivy lets me in and we go to her kitchen to start lunch. This house just exudes intelligence, from the prints on the walls to the classical music playing in the background. Ivy gives me free reign over the fridge and cutting boards.

  Today’s recipes are a protein-heavy soup for Jem, and spanakopita with goat cheese tartlets for those of us with adequate stomach strength.

  “What kind of dough do you use?” Ivy asks. She seems to genuinely interested in everything people say to her. It’s sort of nice. And her short attention span for everything non-architectural means that conversation is pleasantly varied.

  We set up the sheets of phyllo dough in a minimuffin tray. Ivy fills them with goat cheese, feta, cherry tomato, and rosemary with balsamic vinaigrette. Meanwhile, I boil down beef stock for Jem’s soup. I try not to feel relieved that I haven’t seen him yet. Too much happiness tempts the Fates.

  Ivy and I are portioning goat cheese and feta into little pieces when the classical music falters and then re-starts. I thought it was a CD playing somewhere else in the house, but now I think it’s a real person playing. It must be—I only hear a piano.

  We have a bit of a wait while the spanakopita bakes and the soup continues to simmer, so we start to clean up the kitchen.

  “It’s so nice that Jem has a friend like you,” Ivy says as we load the dishwasher. “He had a hard time making friends when we moved here, being out of school so often.”

  His attitude can’t have helped any.

  “He’s in the living room,” she continues. “Why don’t you go say hi before lunch?”

  She directs me down the hall towards the living room—which, I’m given to understand, is different from their ‘front room.’ This house goes on forever. I wonder if Ivy designed it.

  I peek around the doorframe and see Jem sitting at an upright piano with his back to me. It’s an old instrument, the kind that looks like it’s been handed down a few generations. The scrollwork on it is beautiful and the restoration isn’t bad. The innards of the piano are obviously newer than its exterior, because the sound quality is pristine for an upright.

  For a complete asshole, Jem plays notably well. The light, mellow song doesn’t match my idea of Jem Harper, smartass extraordinaire.

  I tiptoe into the living room. He doesn’t notice me until I sit down next to him on the bench, and then he startles so badly he jumps back and strikes six different keys at once.

  “What are you doing, sneaking around like that?” he demands.

  “I’m not sneaking. You’re just oblivious.” He glares at me and begins to pack up the sheet music he was using.

  “You don’t have to stop.”

  “I’m done.”

  I’m in a taunting mood, so I use three fingers and pluck out a simple version of the Addams Family theme song. Jem threatens to slam the key cover down on my fingers.

  “I didn’t know you played.”

  “Yeah, well, you don’t know me that well, do you?” He’s on the defensive, and I know from experience that this will quickly descend into a sulk fest.

  “How long have you been playing?”

  “A while.” He tries to close the key cover but I hold it open.

  “Show me.”

  “No.”

  I have some knowledge of music that I picked up at work, when my boss would teach me during the slow hours. But that was just guitar, and I never owned my instrument. I know even less about how to play the piano. I know part of one song, and that’s it, and I only memorized the finger placement, not the notes.

  I start to pluck out my homely little song and Jem frowns. My left hand doesn’t want to cooperate. After a minute he pinches my ring finger and moves it over to the next key. My incompetence must irk him.

  “Bach is rolling over in his grave right now.”

  “This is Bach?”

  Jem just shakes his head at me. But he can’t resist my
blundering forever, and after a few minutes he starts to play along with me. His version sounds better.

  “Lunch smells good,” he says quietly. I do believe that might have been a compliment.

  “Don’t do that. When you’re nice it screws up the whole dynamic of this friendship.”

  Jem snorts with amusement. He does that a lot. I bet his full-blown hysterical laugh is just a series of increasingly obnoxious snorts.

  “It’s a new soup today,” I tell him. He smiles with genuine pleasure. “Lots of protein. See if you can’t gain another three pounds.”

  Jem’s smile fades to a look of chagrin. “Oh shut up,” he mutters.

  “How much do you weigh?”

  “Inappropriate question.”

  It’s almost time to take the tartlet shells out and check the soup. I slowly stop playing and take my hands off the keys.

  “I gotta get back to the kitchen.”

  “’Kay.” He doesn’t look up when I leave the bench and walk away. He just keeps playing Bach much better than I ever could. I’m almost at the door when he stops suddenly and calls my name—my first name.

  I stop and turn halfway.

  “One-eighteen.”

  I don’t say anything. I don’t even nod. He turns back to his piano, and I turn back to the kitchen. Between the two of us there’s a six-inch height difference, but the weight difference is barely the mass of a healthy newborn. Ten minutes later, we all sit down to lunch. The food is a big hit—even the soup. While we eat Jem condescends to tell me, “Ten years for piano, eight for cello.”

  Now, was that so hard?

  Monday

  I visit Oma Elsja after school. We bake cookies, and it feels just like being five years old again, only this time I’m tall enough to reach the mixer. I bring a plate of cookies home to share with Frank. Before he even takes one bite he pauses and looks at me suspiciously.