by Susie Salom
“Do what, now?” Brooke asks.
“Hold the cable,” Donna says. “You interrupt the wave.”
Donna taps Cam on the shoulder so he can take the plugs out.
“Reed’s gonna keep the cables tight while Brooke plucks the middle one,” Donna tells him. “Then, when it’s time to stop, she’ll hold it so it’ll stop vibrating. That lack of vibration is how you know when to stop.”
“Can you show us?” I ask.
“Reed,” Donna says, “tighten the cables.”
He gives her a quick salute and stands as far as he can from Cameron.
“Brooke.” Brooke looks at Donna. “Pluck.”
Cameron laughs a little.
“Now, hold,” Donna says.
“How?” Brooke asks.
Donna grabs the middle cable.
“I can still feel it,” Cameron says. “Isn’t it supposed to stop moving?”
Brooke uses her hand, too.
“Now it’s stopped,” Cameron tells us. “Okay, so then we need both of you to hold the middle cable when it’s time for me to stop. Nice work, Donna.”
Donna’s cheeks go pink. It’s the first time I’ve seen that color on her all year.
Cameron puts his earplugs in and the blindfold back on. Then we try it again. It works the first time but then after a turn he starts to tip to the right again.
“Ooh, look at the baby!” Ino sucks his thumb and waddles on the bleachers. “Poor little baby!”
Ino keeps saying the same stupid thing over and over until I feel my fists go white. I start to move in his direction but a hand on my shoulder stops me. I turn around and see that it’s Reed.
He interrupted the wave.
He’s followed me a couple of steps across the gym with poor Cameron attached to him. Cam’s not able to see or hear so he’s stumbling around with Donna helping him not to fall. And when I notice my team behind me, I think about the cables holding us together that we can’t see but that are still there.
“Pick your battles,” Donna tells me. “Too much at stake.”
Cameron turns his head all over the place with the blindfold on. “Guys,” he says. “I have no idea what’s happening.”
Brooke tugs off Cam’s blindfold as I lean in toward Donna.
“What does too much at steak mean, anyway?” I ask her under my breath.
She smiles. “It means know when not to act like a blue baboon’s butthole.”
I look back to where Ino was goofing off on the bleachers and am surprised to see Coach Yeung standing near him. I can’t hear what Coach is saying but ol’ Ino is having a staring match with the ground. After a few seconds, he looks up at Coach and does this huge sigh. Then he nods one time.
As the team keeps working on the pluck and hold, I can’t fight my curiousness another minute so I tell them I’m taking five and make my way over to Coach’s tiny office. I knock on the open door.
“Coach?”
My voice has a frog in it so I clear my throat. Coach stands up from his desk. Well, not really a desk. More like a card table with just a grade book and a bamboo in a pot.
“Kyle, come in.”
I step inside the office and can hear my teammates laugh. I want to turn back to look but don’t. Instead, I just clear my throat again.
“Coach, I was wondering,” I start, “I mean, I know it’s none of my business.”
Coach lifts his chin a little.
“I was wondering if you could tell me what it was you said to Ino. Just now. I mean, what did you say to make him quit calling Cameron names?”
Coach looks at me with those dark, steady eyes of his.
“I asked him what he wanted to do with the power he’s been given,” he says. “I told him that he is strong in body. Not everyone is as strong in body as he is. He has the build of a leader, and I wanted him to think about what he was going to do with that gift.”
“So, what did he say?”
Coach rests on the edge of the table and crosses his arms.
“I could tell you,” he says, “but if it’s all right, I’d rather answer with this.” He leans forward a bit. “You are strong in spirit. Not everyone has a spirit as dynamic and humane as the one you have been given. Inside you, lies the power to be the captain of your heart.” His eyes go soft at the edges. “What do you plan to do with that gift?”
I’m standing outside my parents’ room trying to work up the courage to knock.
I need to ask permission to go to Brooke’s house tomorrow to spend the night. It’s the Thursday before the Challenge and Brooke has invited Donna and me for an official NAVS slumber party on Friday before the competition. She says her mom will drive all three of us to the Civic Center Saturday morning. We’re planning to make secret bracelets to tuck under our sleeves that only we know about. It’s our sign for ‘unbreakable team’ and we’re gonna give Cameron and Reed theirs when we meet up with them in the arena.
I take a shaky breath and lift my fist to the door but then let it drop.
What if Mom thinks I’ve already gotten to do enough stuff and says no? I mean, two weeks ago I wasn’t even allowed to go to meetings for NAVS and now I wanna go to a slumber party?
Thing is, I’m a little scared that Mom will get mad if I even ask. Even though it’s been pretty calm the last two weeks. No bears.
I plug into the source of my power and knock.
“Yes?” Mom’s voice comes from the other side.
I twist the knob and the door creaks as I open it. But what I see when I peek inside makes my jaw scrape the floor.
“Mom, what on earth are you doing?”
“Trying on my costume,” she says. “For Halloween.”
I take a few steps inside and move cautiously to the creature that is supposed to be my mother.
She has two faces.
On one side is her real face with this beautiful pointy mask over her eyes that glitters in the light. On the other side of her head there’s this second face that’s this like fire-breathing dragon thing. It’s a mask but it really looks like it’s breathing fire because the flames coming out of the mouth on the dragon side totally sparkle.
“What,” I say, amazed, “are you supposed to be?”
“Just an idea I’ve always wanted to try,” she tells me. “I first came up with it in my Psycho-Cybernetics class in college.”
I move up to her and touch one of the flames. “What’s a psycho cyber—”
“Careful, Kyle. This took me a long time to make.”
“You made this?”
Mom looks in the mirror and smiles under her pointy-eye mask. “Do you like it?”
“Like it? Mom, I love it! That’s the raddest costume I’ve ever seen! But … what are you?”
She lifts a shoulder. “It’s something I made up,” she says, “to explore this idea that, no matter how hard we try to avoid it, we’re always struggling against the split in our hearts. Where we say one thing and mean another. Or promise one thing, but then end up doing the opposite. Even to ourselves. Especially to ourselves.”
I swallow as she looks in the mirror and cocks her head.
“It came out all right.”
“It’s beautiful, Mom,” I say. And mean it. “Are you gonna enter it in a contest?”
“Your uncle Jack is coming over to take you and Michael to the carnival while Dad and I go to a get-together. In all likelihood, there will be a costume contest.”
I like it when Uncle Jack comes over. He’s super relaxed and always wears flip-flops that show his hairy toes—even when it’s freezing outside.
I pick up a grapey ceramic cat off my mother’s vanity. I’m always finding this crazy, interesting treasure in all her things. Usually something small enough to hold in one hand and from another country.
“Cute,” I say.
“That’s a maneki-neko,” Mom tells me. “A beckoning cat. Commonly believed to have originated in seventeenth-century Osaka. It’s from Japan.”
&nbs
p; “What’s it beckoning?”
“Um”—Mom screws up her mouth and looks at the ceiling—“the truth is I didn’t realize the different colors had meaning when I bought it. I just really liked that shade.”
“So each color beckons a different thing?”
“According to custom,” Mom says, “yes. Gold is wealth, I think. And black wards off evil spirits.”
So they won’t get under your skin.
“White is good health and pink is love. I forget what the red one means.”
“Well, what about this guy?” I turn the cat to look at Mom. He’s all roller-poller and jolly.
“Don’t quote me”—she nods at him—“but I think purple means friendship.”
I stare at his cute little paw.
Hi, friendship. Come home.
“Would you like to have it, Kyle?”
I look up at her and cup him just under my throat. “Really?”
She gives me a nice half smile. “Sure.”
“Oh, Mom, thank you!”
I give Len a kiss between the tiny ears. (His name is Len.)
“Why’d you come in here, anyway?” Mom goes back to admiring her work in the mirror, adjusting one of the flames behind her. “Was there something you needed?”
I lick my lips. For a second, I’d forgotten all about Brooke’s slumber party. Seeing your mom dressed up like a psycho cybernetic can do that. I high-pinky Len’s paw and go for the gusto.
“Brooke’s having a slumber party tomorrow for me and Donna because the challenge is Saturday and her mom will take us to the Civic Center after we have a nutritious breakfast and we’re making bracelets as a secret sign for the team to say that we’re unbreakable, so can I go?”
I can see myself in Mom’s mirror, balancing on the very tips of my sneaks with my hands around Len like a prayer. She looks at me there and slides off her pointy mask.
“Yes, Kyle. You can go.”
“But, Mom, it’s just—wait, what?”
“You can go to Brooke’s house for a slumber party.” She turns to face me. “I’ve been thinking a lot about what you said. How trust is something that has to be in evidence from both sides and I think this is another good opportunity for me to extend some of that trust, to you.”
“Thank you, Mom,” I say. “Thank you so, so, so, so much.”
“You’re welcome, Kyle.”
I slip out of her room and slide the door shut, thinking ol’ man Courage has been kinda workin’ for me lately.
I glance at the li’l guy in my hands and know just what I have to do.
I haven’t used Sheroo’s locker for my math book. I haven’t used it at all. But the next morning during homeroom, I take Mrs. A.’s hall pass to go to the bathroom. I don’t, though. I go straight to the locker.
I’m nervous as I work the combination, afraid I won’t be able to get it right since I’ve never done even a practice run. It pops open on the first try. The locker door cries in the empty hall as I let it fall open.
Sheroo’s not one of these throw-in-all-your-crap-and-slam-the-door types. Everything is in order. She even has a little shelf with tiny drawers and stickers of pegasuses (pegasi?) and little bean-shaped guys. One of them is jogging and another one is smelling a daisy. Maybe I should expand my sticker collection from just bats.
Okay, focus, Kyle.
I pull out the sparkly envelope and my little friendship cat, to beckon friendship back. At first, I’m just going to pat his head for luck and then put him back in my pocket but then I feel this little tug from the house of my power. I look at Sheroo’s perfectly ordered locker and see a space right between some spirals and her Physical Science textbook. Len would fit perfect in there.
I slide in my note—a good-hope invitation—and place the jolly kitty right on top, for safekeeping. He’s so adorable. I feel a pang letting him go but hope that, by leaving him in Sheroo’s locker, something else good will come back. Hopefully, Sheroo.
I shut the locker door and click the lock.
I’ve done all I can.
Brooke’s house always makes me think of art class. I think it must be stuck deep in the curtains or something because when I get there on Friday night, practically every room smells like turpentine and clay.
“Kyle, darling, come in,” Brooke’s mom says. She seems to have more grey hair mixed in with her brown now. It’s pulled back into a sleek bun that shows off her tiny, twinkly earrings. When she moves out of the way so I can step in, I hear that it’s not just Donna that’s come over. Cameron and Reed are in the den, too. My eyes get all huge and I look quickly at Mom, wanting the chance to explain that I didn’t know this was going to be like a party party. I hope she doesn’t hear the guys and march me right back down the steps outside to the car.
“Mom,” I say quietly as Brooke’s mother glides toward the den in her skinny jeans, flowy sleeves and bare feet. “I didn’t know Reed and Cameron would be here, honest—”
“It’s all right, Kyle,” Mom says. “I called before we came over. The boys’ll be here for pizza and snacks and you girls will get to bed at a reasonable hour. Tomorrow’s a big day and tonight”—she tips her head—“well, it seems like a good night for celebrating. You’ve all worked hard.”
I give my mom a quick hug and run my overnight things upstairs to Brooke’s room. She’s set up two sleeping bags and Donna has tossed her stuff by one of them already so I get the one by the window—which is how I would have picked it. There’s a tree right by the pane and it’s breezy out so maybe Brooke’ll let us crack the window so we can listen to what’s left of the leaves on it. Plus, it’s the full moon—or almost full. It really feels like fall now. All spooky and snugs.
“Well, what’s your favorite Halloween candy?” Cameron is saying when I come around the corner into the den.
“Donno,” Reed says. “But a good toffee apple always tastes ruddy amazing. ’Specially with jimmies.”
“You mean a caramel apple?” Donna asks.
I shoot a quick look at the space where the TV used to be. There’s just this humongous sculpture of a crane. It’s turned to the side and is showing just one eye. It’s weird because Brooke’s house actually does feel like it’s missing a hum or something. Maybe not. It could just be my imagination. Or maybe it has a different kind of hum. Because Brooke’s mom has hung a lot more plants everywhere, so it’s definitely more mystical and junglier.
I go to the table set up with snacks and grab some carrots and celery sticks with plenty of dill dip. I love crunchy veggies so long as there’s dill dip. The doorbell rings.
“Pizza!”
Brooke’s mom pays for the delivery and we dig in like Martians who’ve just discovered the marvels of junk food. Cameron even doubles up two slices in a pizza sandwich and has to open his mouth kinda wide just to cram it all through. Everybody starts to talk about what it’ll be like in the maze tomorrow and I think about how different it is when we’re all talking about NAVS in person instead of on chat. Of course, we hear more from Brooke. Actually, I’ve kind of noticed that Brooke shares her ideas a lot more when Sheroo’s not around.
It’s strange, thinking about what Meowsie said—how some people bring out different sides of you that don’t exist when they’re not there. I wonder if it’s the same when certain people are around. Do other sides of you disappear? Have certain parts of me disappeared since Sheroo and I have been on the skids? A little ache blows up like a balloon in my ribs, right where my heart should be. It’s not the kind of emptiness you feel when people move to Montana. It’s the kind you feel when people are right where they’ve always been but still seem far away. Sheroo still hasn’t answered my RSVP and tomorrow’s the big day.
(Hey, that rhymes.)
We finish the pizza then go outside to jump on Brooke’s trampoline. It’s a little bit freezing but you can’t really jump with a coat on so we just have to keep moving. Turns out Donna can do pretty amazing flips—forwards and backwards—so I ask her to sho
w me how. Brooke gets in on it, too, and she’s good!
“All right, lemme try.” Cameron moves his arms out like he’s trying to clear space for himself. As if one of his flips would knock us all to Osaka.
“You gotta tuck in more,” Donna tells him. “That’s the only way you’re gonna be able to land on your feet.”
“Well, maybe I don’t want to land on my feet,” Cameron sniffs.
“Maybe you’d want to if you learned how, mate,” Reed says.
“Just, everyone move back.”
Cameron flaps his arms out again and starts to jump as Brooke tugs on my sleeve.
“What is it?” I ask.
She moves her head for me to get off the trampoline with her so after she leaps off, I follow. The dry grass hurts the bottoms of my feet since we’re just in socks.
“Is everything okay?”
“Everything’s fine,” she tells me.
“Your mom’s not getting a reaction to someone’s phone or anything?”
“No, nothing like that,” Brooke says.
Reed and Donna are laughing and I get the urge to turn around and see what Cameron’s doing but I don’t want to be rude. I shake a hand to encourage Brooke to hurry and get whatever it is out.
“Kyle, Sheroo wants to accept your invitation to come to the maze tomorrow but she feels weird about it.”
“Why?”
“She says you refuse to be honest with her about Reed.”
Snap, crapple and pop.
“What does she mean, I refuse to be honest?”
The truth is, I just really need to hear someone else’s take on this whole thing—namely Brooke’s. I mean, on the one hand, she’s the one who told me people aren’t passwords. But then on the other, she said she wouldn’t have written Chris Dixey back if she knew I was in love with him. So, where do you draw the line on how much to share about what you’re really feeling—and do some situations make that line go berserk?