by Susie Salom
It’s eight minutes until I have to call Sheroo and I’m not exactly sure but I’m pretty sure that I’m not allowed to use the phone. Mom already told me all I can do for two weeks is go to school and NAVS. That if my friends are doing anything fun after the meetings, I’m not allowed to stay. I need to leave once official business is over and come straight home to think about what I did.
Dad just gave me a pat on the back and a quick lecture on how violence is never the answer but Mom was ballistic. She said that, after punching a kid in my class, getting on the wrong bus was ‘further evidence of a reckless mind.’ I wanted to tell her, ‘Oh, yeah? Well, what’s reckless about a mind that can do ESP with a person they’ve never even talked to?’ but I didn’t bother.
Because the thing is, I wasn’t trying to be reckless. Not when I stood up to Ino or when I got on the bus with Marcy. I just wish I could find the words to explain to Mom what makes me do things sometimes but then she gets so enormous in my face. And then all I can do is nod and say, ‘Yes, ma’am,’ when what I really feel like doing is turning into someone even more enormous so that my side of the story doesn’t get drowned out by all the kwa-kwa-mua-kwa-kwa-kwaaaaa.
The front door opens and shuts.
7:03.
I slip into the kitchen where Mom’s mug is sitting in the sink filled with soapy water. Dad’s phone is charging so I quietly unplug it and steal into the hall to go to my room and shut the door.
7:06.
I start to dial Sheroo’s number. It’s on speakerphone so the first digit comes out loud enough to wake up the dead. I jump and try to figure out how to mute the stupid thing. Mom’s phone is so much easier to navigate than Dad’s. I accidentally press the camera on and when I try to turn it off, it reverses. I see my face on the screen and can’t resist a little Wallace Pineapple grin. I snap the pic and notice the time.
7:08!
I quickly dial Sheroo’s number and she picks up on the first ring.
“7:09!” she squeals. “Late! By two whole minutes! I’ve been sitting here waiting and waiiiting.”
“Sheroo, can you keep it down?” I whisper. Even though I’m pretty sure Dad can’t hear her voice over the phone.
“Where are you?” she asks. “Are you in a library or something?”
“Why would I be in a library after seven o’clock at night?”
“I don’t know! You’re all whispery. And plus I thought you’d forgotten.”
“When do I ever forget?” I say louder than I mean to. Then I lower my voice. “When do I ever forget?”
“Well, never mind about that,” she says. “Did you know Sasha Poblansky is having a back-to-school party?”
I let out a long breath.
“Doesn’t that sound great?” she shrieks.
“I guess.”
“What do you mean, you guess? I bet she has the numbers of all the hottest guys. And they’ll come if she invites them.”
“Thought you said there was a shortage of hotness at our school.”
“Roger?”
Holy Houdini. It’s Dad! I can hear him calling my brother from down the hall. I freeze in the corner by the window with the phone to my ear.
Maybe he’ll think I’m a lamp.
“There is a shortage,” Sheroo is saying. “But it’s not, like, a famine. I mean, there’s that British guy,” she says. Then her voice goes to mush. “Reed Youngblood.”
A bolt of sugar zings through my guttal area when I hear his name.
Weird.
“Even if he’s the only one Sasha invites, it’d be good enough for me,” Sheroo finishes.
“Roger, have you seen my phone?”
Dad is right outside my door. My heart is wrapping its legs around my ribs like a spider.
“Sheroo, I have to go,” I tell her. “And anyhow, I can’t go to Sasha Poblansky’s because I’m grounded.”
“Grounded?”
I nod. Even though she can’t see me. “Yes, and I’m not supposed to be on the phone but I snuck my dad’s and he’s asking Roger where it is.”
There’s a knock at my door. I shake my hands and drop Dad’s phone. It goes skidding across the floor and thwacks against the closet.
“Kyle?”
“Why are you grounded?” I can hear Sheroo asking.
“Just a minute!” I yell at Dad. I pick up the phone. “Look, Sheroo, I really have to go! I’ll tell you everything at school tomorrow.”
“But you do agree Reed Youngblood is cute?” she asks. “Right?”
“Ky-yle!”
“Yes! He’s just … smashing,” I tell Sheroo. “I have to go. Bye!”
I cut the call and stuff Dad’s phone under a sweater on my bed. Then I cross the room to my door.
“What’s up?” I give Dad my best Bambi eyes.
“Kyle, have you seen my phone?”
“It’s not charging in the kitchen?”
Notice I did not lie.
“I thought that’s where I’d left it,” Dad says. “But it’s not there.”
“Want me to help you look?”
“Sure,” Dad says. “I guess. Michael!”
He starts to move down the hall.
I slump against the door frame and let out the longest breath in captivity. Soon as Dad goes to the den where Meowsie’s doing homework, I grab his phone and tip-jog into him and Mom’s room. Then I dump it in the pocket of one of his pants and sprint back down the hall, sliding in my socks past the entrance to my room before pulling myself in and slamming the door.
I wish Meows went to Georgia O’Keeffe. As I stand on the sidewalk waiting for my bus while he gets on his, I feel like my sadness will swallow me up. Or at the very least it’ll lick me top to bottom like a thirsty camel. I don’t want to go to 6B homeroom and I don’t want to go to gym. I don’t want to do anything but stay in my room and look at stickers of bats.
There’s not that many kids in the seats when I get on the orange bus. Brooke’s already sitting toward the middle with her curly hair floating around her face in a brown cloud. She’s looking out the window and wearing a mysterious patch near the inside of her elbow.
I feel a shot of energy and move quickly to slide in next to her.
“What’s with the patch?” I say. “And why didn’t you tell me about the tests?”
“Tests?”
“Brooke.”
“Heard you got grounded,” she says.
I hate it when Brooke turns into a wall. It’s like, c’mon already.
“Don’t change the subject,” I tell her. “And by the way, who told you? Lemme guess. Sheroo.”
The corner of Brooke’s mouth tugs up. God, Sheroo has a big mouth.
“Well, the two of you can go have the time of your life with ol’ Zebra Stripes Poblansky because I’m not allowed to go. I’m officially grounded from all forms of life except school and NAVS.”
“Relax,” she says. “I’m not going to Sasha’s party, either.”
“Why not?”
Brooke shrugs.
“Because of the tests?”
“Can we just drop it about the tests?”
I lean into her face with one squinty eye until my lashes almost touch her cheek. “But you admit there were tests.”
“So, did you get the book thrown at you?” Reed slides into the seat behind Brooke and me.
I can’t tell if he just got on or if he was hanging around the back of the bus and moved up but all of a sudden, there he is—smacking his backpack against the window near his seat and hanging his arms over mine and Brooke’s. I don’t know what getting the book thrown at me means so I just lift a cool shoulder.
“She’s not allowed to do anything but school and NAVS for two weeks,” Brooke tells him.
“You’ve got a taste for trouble. Don’t you, Fedora?”
“Ignore him,” I tell Brooke. Then I imagine I’m a secret agent being asked a bunch of questions so I make a face like a cyborg and poke a hole in the seat in front of me wi
th my electronic eyes.
“Hey, look, you should be thanking me,” Reed says. “I’m the one who told your boyfriend where to find you.”
“Your boyfriend?” Brooke makes a face. “What boyfriend? You have a boyfriend?”
“Stop saying boyfriend.” I look at the ceiling. It’s mega dirty and grey. Is that ketchup?
“Well, some guy was asking after you at my stop yesterday and I told him you’d gotten on the green bus.”
“It was Michael,” I tell Brooke.
“Why’d you get on the green bus?” she asks.
“Who’s Michael?” Reed says.
I put my hands over both ears and sink into the seat. I’d make a terrible secret agent.
“Michael’s her twin,” Brooke says.
“You have a twin?” Reed asks.
“No, Michael’s my Schwinn. I have a bicycle for a brother.”
Reed smiles at me with his eyes and a fuzzy butterfly beats its wings against the back of my belly button.
“So, how come your brother doesn’t go to our school?” he asks.
“Can we just talk about someone else’s business?” I yell. “Or how about nobody’s! Just everyone be quiet.”
“So-orry.” Reed slumps next to his backpack and disappears into the seat behind us. But I can still hear him when he mutters, “Thought maybe he was Chris Dixey back from Montana, come to rescue the fighting Fedora.”
Brooke lifts an eyebrow at me and I hug my knees to my chest and bury my face in them. The day hasn’t even started yet and already I wish this whole stupid week was done.
There’s something peaceful about the sprinklers outside Mrs. A.’s 6B homeroom first thing in the morning. Summer is hanging on by a pinky toe and I bet they won’t be watering the grass around the track once fall gets here. I can feel it, too. Right around the corner. You can always feel fall creeping up on you, even if you’re not totally paying attention. It’s that kind of season.
Right now, we’re supposed to be filling out a sheet that asks like a jillion questions about what we think. Mrs. A. says not to worry if we aren’t sure about some of the answers because people aren’t made to be put in categories. She says the inventory is not supposed to give us answers as much as it is to help us ask better questions. Teachers love saying stuff like that. Next thing we know she’ll be telling us Godspeed.
1. Whom do you admire?
Whom. Whooooom? Hmm. The first name that comes to my mind is Meowsie but maybe you’re supposed to pick an adult or a famous person and Meowsie isn’t any of those things. I start to wonder if Meows would put Mr. Arriéta on his paper and, out of nowhere, I picture Coach Yeung. He was so cool on the first day of P.E. but the thing is, somebody had to stick up for sweet ol’ Marce. I mean, what should we open the house of our power for, if not to fight for our friends?
I skip the question.
2. Why do you admire this person?
Guess you’re not allowed to skip.
3. What lights do you steer by? When faced with a choice, what do you use to help you decide?
Why do grown-ups ask questions like that? Who sits around thinking about steering? I mean, what am I, the merchant marines?
I blow my bangs against the tip of my fedora. I got it when Mom and Dad took Meowsie and Roger and me to an amusement park in Texas in the middle of summer. Some guy with tattoos all over his neck and huge wooden circles stretching out the holes in both his ears was selling hats at a stand. There were a lot of crazy ones with feathers and sequins and things, but I noticed my plain blue one right away. It was just sitting there, kind of not talking as loud as the other hats, but it did seem to whisper, hello, there. So I begged my dad to buy it and he said no. But after about twenty minutes, I wore him down.
I put down the first answer that comes to my head for question three.
Something tags me in the neck. I look at the floor and see a note folded up in the shape of a fish. Origami! I pick it up off the ground and turn it over to open it. It has three names at the top—Donna, Kyle and Reed. Two of them have check marks.
Underneath the note is a pretty good drawing of a dolphin. I check my name and then write in my own message.
I hope we don’t have to bring a towel because then Mom’ll get all suspicious and think I’m trying to sneak in a swimming party. My bathing suit I can just wear under my clothes and she’ll never know the difference.
I try folding the note back up in a fish but can’t so I just roll it up and plan to tell the kid behind me to pass it all the way back to Donna. Then I think better of it and get up to sharpen my pencil. That way, I can hand it off to Reed. I wonder if they ever had races at Racing Court.
After homeroom, Donna meets me in the hall.
“I added Brooke and Cameron to the note.” She gives it to me. “Have Brooke sign it at lunch then give it to Reed fourth period so he can get Cameron to sign it. If you don’t have a towel, you can borrow one of mine.”
I nod and watch her walk away. She’s wearing all white today—baggy pants and a tee again—but on the skin above one elbow she’s drawn a heart broken into lots of pieces with a red pen. She’s a pretty good artist. I open up the note and look at the dolphin. It looks like it’s smiling at me so I smile back.
I give Brooke the note when I see her at the lockers. Hers is not super close to mine but I know just where it is so I make a point of getting it to her before second period. Marcy’s not in gym, even though she was in homeroom, so I ask Coach if he knows where Marcy went.
“Marcy attends therapy on the last Tuesday morning of the month,” he tells me.
“Really?” I ask. “What kind?”
“I wish I could tell you more about it, Kyle, but the truth is I don’t know.”
As Coach asks us all to line up, I think about how everybody gets to have all these extra things in their life. Marcy and her Tuesday-morning therapy and Brooke with her ultra-secret tests.
I suck in a quick breath. What if Brooke is getting tested for being a psychic? Maybe that’s why she can’t tell anybody. But if I’ve figured it out without her even saying anything, then maybe I should be tested for psychic, too?
“Your partners from yesterday will be your partners for the rest of the section on t’ai chi,” Coach says. “I want you to get used to the way your partner thinks and moves. In actual competition, you would need to use what you have learned to anticipate the moves of a stranger, but for this class, I want to focus on developing your ability to sense what’s coming from the partner you are getting to know.”
I make a smart-person face like I get exactly what Coach is talking about. I want to understand more but, for now, I think the main thing that matters is that Reed is still my partner. Plus, I’ve already proved my sixth sense is working so I can probably just relax a little and use it during the confusing parts.
“There’s a lot more to pushing hands than simply what you sense during combat,” Coach is telling us. “Remember, it’s just as much about getting in touch with the internal part of martial arts. There are thirteen movements in t’ai chi. By the end of the section, we will have tried to master all of them by first mastering ourselves.”
The most basic movement, he says, is the one Reed thinks he’s already so good at—circular power. It’s weird because when you’re using it, you’re supposed to be messing with your opponent’s center of gravity but at the same time be totally relaxed. Coach calls it the song.
I picture Doublefart coming after me and me just calmly whipping out my circular power. I’d be all hwah! and push hands and then he’d bow and be all, ‘Wonder Woman, you are the master!’ And then, of course, I’d be all merciful and tell him, ‘Go in peace.’
“This warding-off movement,” Coach is telling us, “is called p’eng. You will move forward and backward to both yield to and offset the force of your opponent.”
“What do you mean, yield?” Ino asks.
“An excellent question.” Coach smiles at him. “Imagine what it�
��s like to punch water. How does it react?”
“You can’t punch it,” Ino says. “It just, you know, falls back or whatever. Then you’re the idiot for thinking you can pick a fight with water.”
Coach smiles even wider.
“Very good, Nevarez.” He points at him. “Keep that. Okay! Less talking and more movement.”
The assistant flicks on some music that’s all violins and mandolins while Coach starts to go from pair to pair to help us with our technique.
“I’m bloody lost,” Reed tells me under his breath. “Do you have any clue what he’s going on about?”
I don’t answer right away. I just stand with my arms at my sides, staring at the other kids in the class who are at least pretending to know what they’re doing. But after a few seconds, even the music starts to get on my nerves. I think it’s supposed to get us in the mood to be ancient masters but about all it does is make me hungry for hot and sour soup.
“How are we doing here?” Coach walks up to me and Reed.
“Not so good,” Reed says.
“That’s a great answer, Youngblood,” Coach says. “Admitting weakness is a solid way to start. Let’s get you both in position.”
Coach has us face each other and it’s the first time I notice Reed’s eyes are blue. Not light like a glacier, or dark like the ocean in nighttime, but somewhere in between. More like the sky on a friendly, chirpy day.
“P’eng can be used to resist a push.” Coach holds up a hand. “But note how the palm faces you, not your opponent. It is not an attack. But it is using the force of your opponent against them instead of summoning your own force.”
“So you won’t exhaust your power?” I ask.
“Exactly!” Coach says. “It is a way to resist aggression—the anger and fear of another—without giving in to your own.”
Meowsie pops into my head and I remember what he told me yesterday. How anger is not just about what you feel but about what you do. Sounds like anger can also be about what you don’t do.
“One of you will come in for the attack,” Coach says, “and the other will use their arms to ward it off. Imagine making the figure eight with both arms.”