by Susie Salom
Brooke takes a breath. “She says the main reason you fought to stay on NAVS is because you knew that was the only way you could spend time with Reed without making it seem like that’s what you were doing.”
I press my face together with both palms and groan. Okay, well at least that I know is totally grape nuts. I would have kept going to the meetings even if Reed hadn’t been on the team. It felt good to be able to work a puzzle and come up with a solution. Good to do it because I wanted to and not because someone else was telling me that I had to. Being able to get to know Reed better was just a kick bonus point. (All right, very kick.)
“Is that what you think?” I ask Brooke through squashed lips.
“No,” she says carefully. “I think Sheroo’s the one who’s not thinking straight because the simple fact is she likes Reed and he doesn’t like her back.”
I drop my hands from my face and sneak a look at Reed. He does an almost perfect flip and Donna cheers while Cameron tells everyone to move out of the way so he can try again.
“Why do you think Reed doesn’t like her back?”
Brooke pulls me farther away from her trampoline.
“Because,” she says, “I think you’re the one Reed likes.”
My heart creeps up into my trachea. The smell of smoke from someone’s chimney hangs in the air and, usually, I like that smell. Right this second, though, I’m finding it a little hard to breathe. But that doesn’t stop me from wanting to take a running jump onto Brooke’s trampoline and doing a leapfrog over her house.
“Tell the truth,” Brooke says with a serious face. “Have you and Reed kissed? Or anything like that?”
Okay, now the world has gone mad.
I drag her by the sweater sleeve even more far away.
“What?” I whisper fiercely. “Are you crazy?”
“So, you really are just friends?” she whispers back.
“Jiminy Crix, Brooke, yes! Of course we’re just friends. And what in the world makes you think he likes me, anyway?”
“It’s just that”—she stops and licks her lips—“he’s always going around saying the team needs you.”
“Well, doesn’t it?” I say in a small voice.
“Yeah, of course.” She does this big nod. “For sure, it’s just”—she stops talking and starts to chew her thumbnail before spitting out a hunk of cuticle. Gross. “I think what he really might be sayi—”
“Scuse me, scuse me, scuse me, aah-ba-ba-ba-baa!”
Brooke and I leap back as Cameron pushes past us and heads straight for the sculpted bushes at the edge of her yard.
“Oh, my word,” Brooke says as Cam heaves up his pizza sandwich.
She and I both hold on to each other and inch away from the scene of the crime.
“I’m getting my mom.” She books it into the house.
“Cameron,” I say weakly. Then he ralphs up what he had for lunch. Yesterday.
It’s starting to smell. I take one huge step back to wait for Brooke’s mom. Then I go inside, too, to see if I can find some paper towels.
“He just started puking out of nowhere,” Brooke’s telling her mom, who’s wiping her hands on a dishrag as she heads out the door.
“Brooke, get a towel and a cup of water,” her mom says.
“I’m on it,” I say, and go straight for the towels I know are in a cabinet by the sink in the kitchen. “You get the water,” I tell Brooke.
By the time we get the towels and the water to Cameron, he’s a groaning, pale mess. His hair is plastered to his forehead and he’s sweating. Honestly, I never thought I’d see him look this untidy.
“Brooke, honey, call Mr. and Mrs. Pinzón and let them know I’m driving Cameron home. The rest of you get inside and play a board game or something until I get back. He only lives a few blocks away so I shouldn’t be more than ten minutes.”
Brooke nods.
Reed, Donna, Brooke and me step inside behind Cameron and Brooke’s mom.
“Lock the door,” Brooke’s mom tells her, then she leads a dizzy, miserable Cameron out the front gate.
Brooke clicks the door behind them and we watch out the window as her mom drapes a towel on the floor of the passenger seat and gently guides Cameron in, buckling his seat belt.
“Call his parents,” Donna tells Brooke.
She goes to the phone and, just as she’s about to pick it up, it rings.
Landlines are loud.
“Hello? Yes, Mr. Cooley. Yes, I understand. Right away, just—yes, okay.”
She hangs up the phone and dials Cameron’s number. I’m surprised she has it memorized. I guess with landlines, you can’t just save people’s numbers, you have to actually learn them.
She waits for the Pinzóns to pick up.
“Who just called?” Donna asks.
“Mr. Cooley.” Brooke swallows. “Our neighbor. He says the smell is getting into his yard and that we better clean it up immediately. Hello, Mr. Pinzón?”
Reed pulls his phone out of his pocket and dials.
“David,” he says. “Listen, mate, I’m gonna need you to come now.”
Okay, this blows me out of the water. From everything I’ve learned about Reed, I never would have dreamed he’d be the type to bail when things got weird.
“Bring some of the sawdust,” he adds under his breath.
Sawdust?
“Just do it, please. All right.”
He slaps his phone and slides it back into his pocket.
“What was that all about?” I ask him.
“Just asking my brother to help me clean up after Cam,” he mutters.
“You and your brother just happen to have a bag of sawdust lying around?” I smile.
He doesn’t smile back.
“It’s trickier than you think, Fedora.”
I let my smile fade so he doesn’t think I’m doofing around.
“Try me,” I tell him.
His eyes stay on mine for a few seconds. Then, his shoulders slump and he does this tiny, serious nod.
“Someday.”
Late that night, Brooke, Donna and me are upstairs in Brooke’s room, lying in our sleeping bags and staring at the ceiling.
“Poor Cameron,” Donna says in a super quiet voice.
“I can’t believe he threw up so bad,” Brooke says. “I mean, he was fine the whole night until just at the end.”
“I can’t believe Reed and his brother cleaned it up,” Donna says. “Much as I like Cameron, I don’t think I could have done that.”
“They were fast, too,” Brooke says. “And thorough.”
“How do you think Reed learned to clean up puke like that?” Donna asks. “And from the bushes, for crying out loud.”
“Cam didn’t do it in the bushes,” Brooke says. “He hit the edge of the gazebo.”
Donna’s phone dings—are me and Brooke the last people on earth to not have their own phone?—and she slips out of her sleeping bag to get it.
“There’s a message from Reed on Instant!”
Brooke and I jump out of our sleeping bags and run to Donna, face all green by the light of her screen.
(Hey, that rhymes.)
Logan: cam down for the count. just called his house and he’s got the flu thing going round
“Poor Cameron!” Donna cries.
“Donna, can you please keep it down?” Brooke looks at her door all nervous. “And I want you to turn off your phone as soon as this conversation is over.”
Donna looks at Brooke. “It’s not like your mom has to know.”
Donzie: What else?
Logan: hang on a se
Logan: sec
Brooke chews her lip and looks at me.
Logan: he isn’t too happy about not being able to compete tomorrow
Donzie: so what are we going to do?
Logan: well
Reed’s first word comes in but it takes a while for the rest of his message to pop through.
Logan: isn’t this what an alter
nate’s for
Donna and Brooke look at each other then at me.
Logan: you ready to try on some ear plugs and a blindfold Fedora?
The Civic Center. Is huge!
Everything feels electric. Like every person in the place is connected by a cable that’s snaking a zap through the entire arena.
I’m nervous. Like, nervous nervous. But I can’t let it show because now the team is really depending on me and we have to do the best that we can. Last night after Brooke finally convinced Donna to turn off her phone, we ended up making something else instead of the bracelets. We’re still the unbreakable team but now we have even more of a reason to fight for the number-one spot so we designed shrimp tattoos for our faces. Well, Brooke’s mom did, anyway, since she’s the artist. But we gave her design the team stamp of approval so now we’re wearing them on our cheeks. They’re not real tattoos, just face paint. Brooke’s mom is going to do Reed’s face, too, soon as we see him.
Coach Yeung is in the audience along with Chewbraca. So is Marcy with Meowsie and Mom and Dad. And of course Brooke’s and Donna’s dads and David Youngblood. I scan the seats for Sheroo but haven’t spotted her yet.
We’ve just been issued the official earplugs and blindfold and—thank God!—each entire team is allowed to walk through their maze one time. There are six teams and three mazes. They’re all the same but there are three sets of judges to send three teams through at once so everything doesn’t take five hundred years.
Our maze is confusing. I feel like we’ve been shrunk down to the size of ants and shoved into a crazy straw. The whole time Donna, Brooke, Reed and me are walking through it, all I can think of is how I have the easy part. They’re the ones who have to guide me. But it’s not until I put the earplugs in, after the cables attach me to Reed, that I start to realize how hard what I have to do might turn out to be.
We’re in the hall practicing with me at the end of the cables for the very first time. All of us are wearing outfits of magicians, with capes going all the way to the floor and matching red bow ties. The cape they ordered for Cameron actually fits me pretty good but I’m so nervous I feel like I might spew the organic quinoa with raisins Brooke’s mom made us this morning for breakfast all over it.
Okay, do not think about that.
Once Mrs. A. tightens the blindfold over my eyes, the first pluck to the center cable comes. It doesn’t tickle like Cameron’s laughs made me think it would. It’s just this huge brooooong all around the middle part of me that won’t quit. Kind of annoying.
I swallow and lick my lips then move one foot forward. I can feel my heart. The buzz from the center cable spreads out to my arms and fingers and my foot can’t remember how to take the next step. I’m scared. I can’t see anything and all I can hear is my heart beating faster and faster. Everything’s dark and all I have to connect me to the world is this annoying buzz that’s making me feel the fillings in my teeth.
Why did I agree to do this? Why did Cameron have to catch the flu one night before the competition? I want to stop feeling like I’m lost in space. I want to rip these stupid earplugs out to hear the noise of the hall and check to see if there are strangers passing by and feeling sorry for the statue who’s forgotten how to use her feet.
Someone comes up to me. Whoever it is grabs my wrist, but not in a bossy way. Now, they’re squeezing my elbow.
I know who it is. I just do. I feel him put something on my head and know it’s my blue fedora.
I slide a finger under the blindfold, careful not to rub the shrimp off my cheek. When I do, I see the backs of Meowsie’s sneakers walking away from me down the hall.
There is no try.
The pluck to the center cable comes. I know exactly what I have to do so I take one step and then another.
I don’t believe it.
I think I might be tilting just like Cameron! I sign KYLE CONSTANTINI in the air with big letters—who cares what I look like? I need the letters to be big so that I can feel big—so I can tell which way I’m tilting.
It’s the left. I wonder why Cameron kept going right and I go left. I wonder what it is about not being able to hear or see that would make you not be able to walk in a straight line. I mean, all you have to do is put one foot in front of the other. Why do we need our eyes and ears to do that? Who knew it could turn you in circles just to move?
The buzz in the center cable stops completely so I do, too. The first tap comes. It’s on the side I’m tilting toward so I turn to that side.
Weird.
All of a sudden, I wish there was a way for someone to send me the message that I’d made the turn okay. I can’t believe none of us thought about that before. I wonder if Cameron wanted it, too, but he just didn’t ask. It’s amazing how much of me needs to know I did all right.
The pluck to the center cable comes again so I just start advancing. I think it says a lot when you choose to move even when you’re not sure you’ll get where you’re headed. We make four or five turns—I kinda lose count—and then someone is tapping my shoulder. I slide the blindfold off and pull out the plugs.
“That’s all we have time for,” Mrs. A. tells me.
What? Is she kidding me? I need more practice! This wasn’t enough! And now it’s time to go into the maze?
“Mrs. Arceneau.” I grab her arm.
She looks at me through her rose-colored glasses.
“This isn’t easy what you’re doing, Kyle,” she says. “But maybe you and this moment were meant for each other.”
A moment and a breakthrough.
For a second, I can almost hear a choir—like from the Circle of Life. I try to move toward the door of the arena but kind of can’t. Then I can. Sometimes you think there’s no way you can do something but then all of a sudden you just do.
We pass through the entrance. While the judges are watching the school before us—they’re just rolling their team member on a dolly dressed like a spaceship so I know we can cream them—we decide to reach out to Cameron.
Brooke’s mom draws the most perfect little orange shrimp on Reed’s cheek and fills it in. It looks good on him. He, me, Donna and Brooke get together for a group selfie—a grelfie—on Donna’s phone. I’m standing between Reed and Brooke with Donna on the other side of Brooke holding the phone out in front of us. We squeeze together and I feel Reed’s arm around my shoulders, fingers curling at my neck. I lift both arms to put one around Reed and one around Brooke while Donna yells, “Say provolone!”
The four of us break apart and we text the pic to Cameron so he can see how much we’re thinking of him right at the moment we go into the maze. Then Donna says, “Okay, lemme get a shot of just Reed and Kyle.” She lifts her phone again. “Since they’re the ones that are gonna be attached in the maze. We can get a before and an after.”
Reed and I shoot a look at each other and he shrugs with kind of an upside-down smile like, why not?
Why not.
We scoot in together again until our capes almost blend into one. We’re so close, I think I can pick out the soap he used this morning. He smells like fresh limes. I feel starry and light as I smile into the camera on Donna’s phone and that’s the second I spot Sheroo.
Her eyes meet mine and I feel my smile shrink as she shakes her head at me with that disappointed look of hers. Then she turns on one heel and walks straight back out one of the doors.
“All good?” Reed asks me.
I swallow once, twice. A prickly feeling spreads under my arms. Like the kind you feel when someone brakes in the car, really fast and unexpected. It’s like your body is trying to calm down after barely escaping an accident. Only I don’t feel like I’ve escaped. I feel like I’m about to go straight into traffic and have no idea how to drive.
“I think so.” My voice comes out wobbly. For a second, the arena starts to spin.
“Hey.” Reed touches my wrist with the tippiest tips of his fingers. “Kyle.”
I focus on his bow tie.
> “You’re not doing this by yourself, you know.”
I look him in the eye.
“Trust.”
The earplugs go in. The blindfold slides on and erases Reed’s familiar face from view. The world goes silent, and dark.
The maze is long.
A lot longer than it seemed when I walked through it before. At first, I get that hot, panicky feeling in my throat—like I just want to see and hear again right now—but I take really long, slow, deep breaths and think about how it’s my friends I’m connected to, and how these ones aren’t gonna let me fall.
As I take steps in—I hope—a straight line with the buzz running around my waist, I realize the one thing that was not in our plan is some kind of sign to let me know when I’ve made the right step, and when I’ve made the wrong. I think about what it must be like to be a wayfinder on a cloudy night when they can’t see any stars. They know the stars are there. Stars don’t ever go away. Just the ability to see them sometimes does. So I guess that’s what wayfinders learn how to do. They search out the truths that are already hanging out in their houses of power, and choose to point themselves in the right direction.
I try not to worry that I might be tilting. I just keep taking these big, slow breaths until not being able to see or hear starts to feel a little more normal. The buzz stops and, automatically, my feet freeze. I wait for the tap to come and it does. I turn in its direction and the cable goes crazy! I don’t get what that means!
I can’t tell if the side cable has been plucked or tapped or dropped but the message has really stopped making sense. So I just stand there—imagining myself out at sea when the sky has swallowed the light—and wait for a signal to get clear. This is what we were missing. Signals to tell us how to correct our course.
There’s scrambling around and the cables go tight again. I can feel Reed at the other end of them and get very still. All I can do is wait until I understand what my stars are trying to tell me—right now, in this very moment. The cables go a little loose and I feel movement. Then they tighten again. A solid tap comes on one side and I think, Brooke! I know her energy. I take a small step in that direction and the cables tighten. And somehow the feel of those cables gives me the confidence I need to turn all the way.