by Sara Zarr
A headache started to tap tap tap under Kyle’s left temple. “Maybe, but you don’t know how it’s been lately,” he said. “You’re not there. I think it really is bad, like they might lose the business?”
“Worst case scenario, the Najarians buy them out.” She got up to grab the bottle of wine off the counter that divided the kitchenette from the living room. “Do know how Aunt Gina sends us that goat card every year?” she asked.
“Yeah?” It started a long time ago. Every Christmas, Great-Aunt Gina sent a card saying she’d donated a goat to a family in Zanzibar in their names. They always laughed at it. Making fun of Great-Aunt Gina was kind of a tradition. She was a nun, first of all, in a mostly non-Catholic family. Her order or whatever didn’t wear robes and stuff, they just clomped around in sandals with socks and wore no makeup.
“I know we all thought it was a big joke.” Megan fell back into her spot on the couch. “One year I looked up the website on the back of the goat card. I clicked through the explanations of how a goat or a few chickens or rabbits or even a llama could make a big difference for some people in the world. There were other parts of the site showing how you could give people and villages irrigation pumps. Stoves. Farm equipment. Kyle, for the price of the phone I was holding in my hand to look up the site, we could have sent a girl to school for a year.”
Megan was officially on a Megan rant now. Kyle rubbed his temple and closed his eyes. He saw Jacob in the passenger seat, explaining how busy his own father was.
“Then there are the constant upgrades to the house, to the cars, to the gadgets,” she continued. “Everything is being replaced all the time whether it needs to be or not, they’re just on automatic. They can never just let an appliance or a piece of furniture or a counter surface or a paint color be fine. It can always be better. They run a whole company based on the concept that what you have isn’t good enough. Think about it. Then there are the extras. Kyle, so many extras!”
He opened his eyes to hear about the extras as Megan ticked them off on her fingers until she ran out of fingers. “Mani-pedis and hair color and blowouts. Baseball camp. Horse camp, surf camp, music camp. All the camps, Kyle, we went to all of them. Gym memberships and golf memberships and eating out and vacations and wine collecting. Our family could have educated, fed, and clothed several villages’ worth of people by now.”
“Okay, yeah, when you list it out it’s a lot. But I’m not—”
“No no, my point here is if Mom wanted to move out or Dad wanted her gone, she’d be gone. This is their game. Only now they’ve dragged you into it.”
“And Jacob and his mom,” Kyle said.
“Who?”
God, she hadn’t even been listening. “The kid, Megan, the whole reason I’m here right now. The kid of the lady who is the wife of the husband who Mom is seeing.” He wanted to close his eyes again. His brain had no juice for processing the money stuff Megan was obsessed with. “Do you have any food? I didn’t eat dinner.”
“Oh, shit, yeah. Let’s forage.” She got up and went to the fridge; he followed. “Leftover Thai—it’s really good and Julie’s parents own the place, so I can always get more. Two pieces of pizza of indeterminate age. Cheddar. We always have cheddar. Um, PB and J.” Megan pulled everything she’d listed out of the fridge and put it on the small counter in a pile. “Okay, so the kid, Jacob. He’s on your Little League team or something? I was listening.”
“No. It’s just an after-school fun thing for fifth graders. Coach Ito asked me to when I went to talk to him because you told me I should.”
She dumped pad thai and curry beef and rice into a bowl and put it all in the microwave. “That’s for you. I’m volunteering as tribute to eat the old pizza.” She handed him a glass of water. “Chug this.”
“Thanks.” He looked at her over the rim of the glass while he drank.
“So the goat thing?” she said.
Still on the goat thing. Kyle gave up. “Yeah?”
“I talked to Mom about it back then,” Megan said. “And she was all, ‘We don’t pick where we’re born. The way we live is normal for here. The way they live is normal for there.’ And I asked why, why is it normal to have so much more than we need? And she said I could feel guilty about it if I wanted, but she wasn’t going to, guilt doesn’t help anything. So that’s Mom. And I bet she doesn’t even feel guilty about this kid or the wife.” She took the Thai food out of the microwave, stirred it, put it back in. “This is why I cut it all off, Kyle.”
“Okay.”
“I suggested a completely rational plan to do my basics at community college and save that money, and she freaked out like, ‘Oh, Megan, you have not worked this hard on your GPA so that you could go to community college!’ and I was like, “Why not? Who cares? You could have three entire schools built in Bolivia for the cost of one year of bonehead gen-ed requirements that I could do online or whatever!’” She took the food out. “Why are you looking at me like that?”
“Because . . . I feel like you’re making this all about you and your issues with Mom?”
“And Dad.” She took a bite of pizza, cold.
“So, should we tell Taylor? Even though Dad said it’s in the vault?”
Megan rolled her eyes. “The vault. I thought Dad only used that with me after he narced on Adam to the police.”
“No. I’ve got like two things in there plus now this, and I’ve known for over a month and been the only one besides them who does, and I’m telling you it messed up my relationship with Nadia, and baseball, and my grades, and now I’m like . . . part of it!” He pointed at himself, stabbed at his own chest. “I’m part of their stupid fucking affair because I know the other people and I know they don’t know and now it’s like I’m cheating on them too.”
They stood there staring at each other.
“Well, shit,” Megan said.
“Oh my god,” Kyle said. “I think I just realized that’s what I’m feeling.”
She nodded. “Contrary to how we were brought up, talking about things and allowing yourself to be upset actually does help. And you know what I’m going to say.”
“Something about goats?”
She laughed. “Noooo.”
“That I’m not actually cheating on Jacob and his mom?”
“Right. This is not on you, Kyle. Here.”
She handed him his bowl of food. The noodles and rice and meat and sauce were all so good, even though they weren’t meant to be all mixed up. Kyle ate faster, suddenly starving after weeks of living on protein bars and crackers and cafeteria burritos and cheap fast food.
“The tricky thing is,” Megan said, “it’s not your secret to keep, but it’s also not your secret to tell. Mom and Dad have put you in a super-shitty place.”
“Thank you.” He glanced at her. “I told Emily.”
“Who?” She started laughing almost immediately. “Kidding. Wow, you guys really are close.”
“I trust her.”
“Taylor is going to figure it out when she comes home,” Megan said.
“Do you think I should warn her ahead of time? Just tell her, like, right now?” He finished his food and literally licked the bowl.
“I don’t know. She just had a big drama with one of her friends, who treated her really bad, if you believe Taylor’s side of it, and I mostly do. . . .”
“Okay, well, no one asked me if I could handle it when they dumped this shit on me, so maybe Taylor will just have to eat it.”
“Damn, Kyle.”
“I’m a little tired of being the water boy for this family’s garbage, is all.”
She tossed her pizza crusts in the trash and said, “Mixed metaphor.”
While he rinsed his dish in the sink, his eyes fell on a picture of him and Megan and Taylor when they were little, at the farm. The farm.
“Did Taylor tell you about the farm?” he asked.
“No?”
“Have some more wine.”
They went ba
ck to the couch and he told her about the farm being sold, what all he knew, what their parents had said about it. She didn’t cry, but she did finally stop talking about goats.
“What I want,” Kyle said, “is for all of us to be at the farm this summer. You. You have to go.” Yeah, it was what his parents wanted, but he wasn’t asking her for them. He was asking for himself. “It’s the last summer. Forget Mom and Dad. When was the last time me and you and Taylor were all together, with all the cousins?” The fact that she hadn’t interrupted him yet meant he was getting to her. “You used to love it as much as everyone else. Come on. Picking pears? Swimming in the pond and trying to convince me it was full of poisonous snakes? Sleeping in the bunkhouse and Uncle Mike scaring us in the middle of the night, pretending to be a ghost from the Gold Rush?”
Her shoulders slumped and she let out a whimper, like she was a kid realizing she was going to have to do something she didn’t want to.
“Megan, remember how even when we were little we barely saw any parents the whole week? You can avoid them. It’s a big place. Pretend they aren’t there. Do it because it’s our place. All the cousins’.”
They had a staring contest while she sipped her wine. Kyle didn’t flinch, and finally Megan said, “I’ll see if I can get time off work.”
Not even being exhausted and full of noodles and wine helped Kyle get to sleep on the world’s lumpiest couch. After trying and failing to find a comfortable position, he moved onto the floor and decided now that he was past his big emotional crisis, it was okay to text Emily.
I think I talked Megan into coming back to the farm this summer.
It was late and he shouldn’t have expected a reply, but that didn’t keep him from waiting, adding more.
I’m staying at her apartment right now. It’s a dump compared to our house. I guess the independence from my mom and dad is worth it to her. He snapped a picture of the laundry basket/coffee table. This is her living room furniture.
Honestly though, he could kind of understand what Megan saw in her situation. The couch was janky and the coffee table doubled as a receptacle for dirty clothes and he could tell that leftovers from her roommate were her main food. Still, she didn’t owe anything to anyone. She didn’t have to pretend or hide or keep up any illusion of being something she wasn’t.
Her life is real, tho, he sent to Emily, wishing she were there with him. It would be like when they were kids, sleeping in the bunkhouse on old metal springs at least as uncomfortable as this couch. They’d talk into the dark and play twenty questions until Alex and Martie were asleep and Taylor and Megan were telling them to shut up. They always outlasted Taylor and Megan, though. The last ones standing.
“Are you still awake?” Kyle would whisper.
“Are you?” Emily would reply.
“Yeah.”
Then they’d let themselves drift off, too.
12
HE WOKE up on the floor to the sound of someone in the kitchenette. When he peered around the couch, he saw it was Megan’s roommate, Julie, her back to him. She had black hair in a buzz cut, or was growing out a shaved head. Black T-shirt, green basketball shorts. Nice, cut calves.
“Hey,” he said, quietly as he could. “Um, I’m here. It’s Megan’s brother. Kyle. I didn’t want to scare you.”
She glanced over her shoulder, smiled. “Yeah, I know. Megan told me before she went to bed last night. Want coffee?”
“No thanks.” He’d had coffee a couple of times and did not understand everyone’s obsession with something so nasty.
“Did you sleep okay?”
“Sort of . . .” There was a note on the laundry basket and a ten-dollar bill—If you need gas money, in Megan’s handwriting.
“The bathroom is free right now if you want it, but I have to get in there in like ten minutes to get ready for work. So you know.”
“I’m good.”
Julie came into the living room and sat on the other end of the couch with her coffee and her phone. She had a tattoo on one of her shoulders, medium sized. He squinted.
“Is that the bear from the California flag?”
“Hell yeah it is. I’m ready for us to secede and run our own country here.” She sipped her coffee. “You’re the first person from Megan’s family I’ve met.”
“I figured. She’s not that into us.” He pulled his fleece blanket up around him. Julie was just going to sit here on the couch for ten minutes? “Um, that food from your parents’ restaurant was amazing, by the way.”
“They both grew up in Thailand, so they pretty much know what they’re doing.”
He searched for a topic. “So, what does Megan say about us?”
“About your family? That you’re capitalist pigs who will die in the coming revolution.” She paused. “I’m joking. We don’t talk about it that much. Our work schedules don’t line up and we have our own lives, but she’s never said anything that makes me think she wants to disown you guys or anything.”
He was looking again at the bear on her shoulder. Her arms were pretty. Her neck. The way he could see the whole curve of it because her hair was practically nonexistent. “Do you play basketball?” he asked when he realized he was staring at her calves again, tried to pass it off like he was looking at her shorts.
“In high school I did, but only for fun anymore. I’m too short.”
She sipped her coffee, did some stuff on her phone.
Kyle said, “I play baseball.” Julie glanced up at him, nodded, looked back at her phone. He felt self-conscious and young and wanted to be back in a place where he knew what he was. “I guess I’ll go ahead and grab a quick shower.”
He was two hours late for school. Mrs. Ito, Coach Ito’s wife, worked in the office and told him his dad had called to excuse his lateness.
“Really?” He’d meant to call home but had forgotten to charge his phone at Megan’s and now it was dead.
“He said you’d either be late or absent and that you had a legitimate family-emergency-type excuse. I hope everything is okay.”
“Thanks.”
He took the hall pass and went straight to geometry, which had already started. Automatically, his eyes found Nadia’s when he walked in. After a slight hesitation, she smiled and he felt lifted. After class, they walked together a little bit. The last day of school was still a month away, but that nearly-summer feeling already wafted through the halls, a mix of stress over grades and tests and excited anticipation for being done. It almost felt good. Kyle could almost scoop it up like an easy grounder and feel it in his palm.
Then Nadia touched his arm and said, “I want to tell you something.”
She sounded nervous, and Kyle knew this was not going to be good. He stopped walking. “Okay.”
“It’s not a big deal, but I didn’t want you to hear it like a rumor and then not ask me and . . . you know. It’s, well, I’m going out with Mateo.”
Mateo. He pictured Mateo standing in the gym with the medicine ball, confirming their breakup. Had he just been waiting, all along? “Did he ask you or did you ask him?”
“That’s irrelevant,” Nadia said in her calming, reasonable voice. “The point is, I respect you and our past, and even though I don’t have to tell you, I wanted to.”
“But . . . it’s only been like two weeks.”
She shook her head. “No, Kyle. Two weeks since we actually talked about it, but over a month since you disappeared on me.”
Students streamed past them. Kyle felt frozen, but Nadia took his elbow and pulled him to the locker wall. “I know it’s probably hard for you that it’s Mateo, I know. We were texting a lot about you, actually, when you kind of ghosted us. And we got close.”
“You got close? But we were in love.” He couldn’t believe he said it. Like he had just emptied his pockets, given someone his very last dime.
He checked her face, wanting her to look like he felt: totally broken. But what she looked was infuriated. “Don’t, Kyle. Just don’t. It’
s not like that with Mateo—ugh, I don’t even know why I’m explaining it after you explained literally nothing about how you treated me.”
“It was my parents,” he blurted, ready to spill everything, way too late.
Her eyes widened. “Your parents? What, they didn’t like me?”
“No, they loved you.”
The bell rang. Nadia held up her hand before he could say more. “I have to go. I thought I’d be nice and let you know before you heard it anywhere else. If it were me, I wouldn’t want to hear it randomly.”
He swallowed, tried to salvage what might be the last impression he ever got to make on her. “I’m glad you told me. I’m really sorry. If I could do everything over again, I would do it all so different, Nadia, I’d fix it before it was too late. I want you to have good memories of me,” he pleaded. “Don’t hate me. Please. I mean you can, you can feel whatever you want, you—”
“I don’t hate you, Kyle.” Her anger seemed to deflate; now she mostly sounded tired. “I do have good memories and I’ll never hate you.”
His eyes filled. Not now. Come on.
“But the way it ended was awful,” she continued.
“I know.”
“I’m not over it.”
He nodded.
“So just . . .” She closed her eyes. “Just be gone when I open my eyes, okay?”
And he was.
Now he had to go work with the kids and try to treat Jacob exactly the same as he treated the other kids. He’d started to give a few of them nicknames: Ruby-Jean, Tatum-Tot, El Fuego, Bobby One-Sock . . . just dumb stuff to make them laugh. He hadn’t come up with anything for Jacob, and now every time he laid eyes on the kid, it reminded him what he’d told Megan last night: that he felt part of it now, part of the lie.
Coach Malone wanted him to set up a drill with half the group to help them with fielding grounders, while Malone took the other half and had them work on pitching and catching. Kyle hoped Jacob would end up in Malone’s group, but nope.
He put the fragment of his brain that was still thinking about Nadia on ice and taught grounding skills the way his dad had taught him, step by step, just putting balls on the ground and having the kids practice picking them up with their gloves and coming back to a throwing position. He kept not looking at Jacob, berating himself for it the whole time. Nothing was Jacob’s fault, and pretending he didn’t exist wasn’t going to change the truth.