“Bring it,” said another.
It was hard to tell which players were on which team, but no one was taking the game seriously. Wren got passed the puck a few times. She was gripping the hockey stick too tight, and her return passes were sloppy.
Still, she was a better skater than anyone else in the game.
And she was determined to prove it.
Wren relaxed her grip. Out of the corner of her eye, Wren saw her dad turn away from Mr. Morris and jog down the path. Every time they came to Occom Pond, Wren’s dad said that skaters who played hockey without helmets were idiots who were asking for trouble.
So she was not surprised when he yelled, “Wren! Be careful!”
Puh-lease. These players could hardly stay upright. Nothing was going to happen.
Wren got a pass. She slid the puck to a boy who fell flat on his stomach. The other team took control. Wren skated backward, her stick on the ice, ready for defense.
Whoosh.
The puck flew past her cheek, close enough that she felt its force through the air. Wren fell back onto the ice, too startled to catch herself.
Her butt hit first.
Then her head.
Pain shot through her entire body, but Wren pushed herself back up. She ignored the offers of help and skated to the bench next to the warming hut.
Her dad was only a few feet away. She could hear the crunch of his steps on the frozen snow. Wren hung her head between her knees, pretending to retie her perfectly secure laces.
Wren fell a lot during practice, her body hitting the ice at all sorts of angles. A knee bruised. A hip banged. A palm scratched.
Wren didn’t cry then, and she wouldn’t cry now.
She knew how to hold back tears.
5
Izzy and the Vibe
On Sunday evening Izzy sat at her desk drawing. She was just putting the final touches on a stick-figure girl wearing one bright pink mitten who’d tripped and fallen into a puddle of wintery slush when Nate knocked on her bedroom door.
“Yo, Iz,” he said. “Family dinner is in ten minutes. Put on a fake happy face.”
Izzy flipped the paper over in case Nate stepped into her room. “You’re the one that hates family dinner,” she said. “Not me.”
Nate huffed, a burst of air passing through his nose. Nate huffed a lot. He huffed when their parents told him to pick his clothes up from the floor, to put down his phone, to wear a hat because it was snowing. The only two things that Nate did not huff about were soccer and his abs. Nate was obsessed with his abs.
“The vibe I’m picking up is that this is one of those serious family dinners,” said Nate. “Mom’s lighting extra candles. Chances are someone screwed something up. My money’s on Dad.”
“Why Dad?”
“You’ll understand when you’re older,” said Nate as he stepped into Izzy’s room and looked at her sticker door. His eyes rested on a series of smiling cows jumping over moons, as if they proved his point.
Izzy thought about the conversation that she’d overheard yesterday with Phoebe’s mom. And now a serious family dinner. What was going on?
“Dude,” said Nate. “Don’t look so freaked out. It’s just family dinner.”
As Nate left to go into his own room, Izzy turned back to her butterfly tin of Sharpies. She thought about starting a new drawing, maybe something involving nail polish that was actually blood, or possibly poison, but she was too nervous about dinner to think of how to make that work.
Instead, she went downstairs where she found her mom decorating the dining room table with votive candles, evergreen branches, and flowers cut from her favorite hydrangea bush in the front yard. It was February, so the once silky white hydrangea petals were dry and brown. But Izzy’s mom had tied the stems together with twine and placed them in a yellow ceramic vase. And suddenly the flowers looked beautiful.
Standing in the doorway out of sight, Izzy was tempted to turn around and go back to her room. Something about seeing her mom adjust the stems so that the petals rested perfectly above the rim of the vase made Izzy even more uneasy.
Izzy’s mom always said that it was a gift to be creative and that someday, when Izzy was older and out of school, the world would feel full of opportunity. Izzy could be an illustrator! A painter! A fashion designer! A sculptor! Her mom made the options seem like items in a store. Just walk down the aisle and pick the one that you like best.
But decorating homes was her mom’s way of being creative. It was the career that she wanted to pull off the shelf. As far as Izzy could tell, her mom was having a really hard time making it happen.
It made Izzy wonder what else her mom was wrong about.
Because Izzy’s mom was full of promises. Not just about careers, but about friendship. She promised that someday Izzy would find a group of wonderful friends and that those friends would love her just as she is. They would all take one scoot back and invite her to sit with them on the circle rug. Okay, so her mom didn’t say those exact words. But her mom did give that impression, as if she was oblivious to the fact that the circles at school were not expanding; they were getting smaller. And they showed no signs of changing.
What if nothing her mom promised was true? Suddenly Izzy wanted to escape back up to her room. She turned to walk away, but the floor creaked and her mom looked up from the table.
“Oh, hey, Iz,” said her mom. “What do you think?”
Izzy almost told the truth: that the table looked really pretty. Instead, she shrugged. Her mom hugged the napkin that she’d been folding to her chest. Izzy realized that by not answering the question, she was hurting her mom’s feelings. But for some reason, it felt worth it.
Row’s tail stuck out from underneath the dining table, thumping against the floor in a steady beat. Izzy crawled under to sit with him. With Row’s warm body next to her and the dark underside of the wood table above her, Izzy could almost pretend that nothing worrisome was going on. No fancy family dinner, no mysterious ideas, no untrustworthy promises. No drawings hidden in drawers, no beaded bracelets, no lost mittens. She buried her nose in Row’s neck, inhaling his scent of dirt and sunshine. When Izzy looked up, two pairs of feet were in front of her—her mom’s black ballet flats and her dad’s scuffed brown loafers.
The shoes were perfectly parallel, an unnatural position that told Izzy her parents knew she was under the table and were deciding what to do about it. Then Nate’s sneakers joined them, the laces dirty and frayed.
“I don’t think we have a choice,” said Izzy’s mom.
“Afraid not,” said her dad.
Nate said nothing, although Izzy heard him huff.
“I think we’ve got to go in,” continued her dad. “Implement the rescue mission.”
“Sounds serious,” said her mom.
As her parents’ feet stepped away from the table, Izzy saw her dad wrap his arm around her mom’s waist. She couldn’t see their faces, but there was something about the way her mom’s hip pressed against her dad’s body that made Izzy certain her dad was kissing her mom on the cheek. Izzy smiled into Row’s neck.
The next thing Izzy knew, her parents were climbing under the dining room table, wrapping their arms around Izzy and shielding their faces from Row, who was thrilled at the unexpected excitement. Izzy tried to wiggle away, but she couldn’t help laughing.
She was annoyed and relieved. Opposites.
“Okay, okay,” said Izzy as her dad tried to kiss her on the cheek. “I’m coming out.”
“Mission accomplished,” said her dad.
“About time,” said Nate. “Does nobody else smell that chicken?”
As Izzy’s family carried the food from the kitchen and sat down at the table, the silliness that was in the air blew away, replaced by a calm silence. Izzy’s mom smoothed the napkin in her lap. Her dad placed his elbows on either side of his plate and pressed his fingers together in a steeple grip. Nate grabbed the serving fork from the plate of chicken, but instead of digging in, he lef
t the fork lingering in the air. Izzy didn’t know where to look. Her mom? Her dad? No place felt safe.
“So now is when you finally tell us what’s going on,” said Nate. “We’re not morons.”
Izzy wanted to nod, but she was too nervous to move.
Their dad sighed. “Okay,” he said. “You’re right. We do have some news.”
Nate huffed. “Knew it. Bring it on. What is it? Divorce?”
“What?” said their mom. “No one is getting divorced.”
“Why would you even joke about that?” said their dad.
“Because we don’t know what’s going on!” said Izzy. There were tears clinging to the ends of her words, as if they were trying to climb over and drown them.
“Okay, here’s the thing,” said their mom. “We’re going to be moving—”
“What!” interrupted Izzy. “Moving where?”
Every year someone at her school moved. The teachers gave the kid a gift so they’d remember all their old friends. A T-shirt that everyone signed, or a class photo with everyone’s initials written on a wooden picture frame. Most kids acted all sad and promised to keep in touch forever, but as soon as the person left they would start talking about how annoying he or she was and how life was so much better without them.
Izzy could imagine all the things Daphne and Phoebe would say about her. Yesterday’s pathetic pink mitten delivery would probably be at the top of the list. A tear slid down Izzy’s cheek.
“Not moving moving,” said Izzy’s mom, reaching for Izzy’s hand. “We’re moving into the apartment over the garage. For a week. It’ll be fun. The garage apartment is so cozy.”
“Exactly,” said her dad. “It’s got everything we need. Kitchen, bathroom, sink, shower. We’ll throw inflatable mattresses on the floor and plug in some space heaters. You’ll be on school break next week anyway. It’ll be like camping. Or what’s that word I read about . . . glamping? Glamorous camping. What could be better?”
So many things, thought Izzy.
The garage apartment was two empty rooms above the garage at the end of the driveway. There was a tiny kitchen, a bathroom that had a toilet with a chain coming down from the ceiling, and a sink that made angry gurgling noses whenever the faucets were turned on. The plan had been to rent the apartment to college students. Or something. Izzy had never given the plan much thought because the garage apartment had been empty for as long as they’d lived in the house.
“But why can’t we stay here?” asked Izzy. “Is it mold?” There was mold in the school gym last year and the teachers said it could make everyone sick. After they closed the gym and removed the mold, Izzy could still sometimes feel the bad stuff entering her body. Even now, just thinking about mold made her lungs all prickly and hot. Or maybe it wasn’t her lungs; maybe it was her heart.
“It’s not mold, Iz,” said her dad. “The house is fine. Better than fine, actually. Mom did such an awesome job decorating it that we put the house on VRBO just to see what would happen. And someone made us an offer right away.”
“What’s VRBO?” asked Izzy.
“Vacation rental by owner,” said her mom. “It’s a website where you can list your home for people to rent on their vacations.”
“Someone wants to come here for vacation?” asked Izzy. “That doesn’t make any sense. There’s nothing special to do.”
Nate huffed. “Strangers are literally moving into our house and you’re worried about whether they’re going to have a good time?”
“Listen, Iz,” said their dad, ignoring Nate. “I don’t know why these people are coming here and I don’t care. I only care about us. Renting out your home is a thing that people do sometimes. To make money.”
“So we’re out of money?” Money confused her. Not the dollars and cents part of money, but whether her family had enough money, or not enough. Whenever Izzy asked, her parents said vague things like, “We have everything we need.” Or, “We’re very lucky.”
But there were other times when she heard her parents talking about loans, second mortgages, and refinancing. Even if they didn’t use the exact word money, Izzy understood the message—things were tight.
“We’re not out of money,” said her dad. “But we are short on cash. We have more money going out right now than we do coming in. That happens sometimes. To entrepreneurs.”
Izzy’s dad was an entrepreneur. Last year he quit his job working for a big company to start ThinkText, an app that restricted users to one text per hour. No emojis, no abbreviations. Izzy’s dad believed it would force people to be more thoughtful, less impulsive. In a world where everyone was bombarded with information, her dad wanted to slow things down and make texting more considerate, like writing letters used to be. The thing her dad hadn’t figured out yet was how to make a lot of other people feel the same way.
Nate dropped his fork onto his plate. “This really, really stinks,” he said.
Their dad nodded. “Yes. It really, really does.”
After dinner Izzy asked if she could use the computer to do a Draw Sweet. She wanted to escape into Dori’s pastel-colored world of joy, but there was something else she needed to do first.
Izzy opened Google and typed “vacation rental by owner” into the search bar. She clicked the link for VRBO.com. The words destination and ultimate vacation and luxury floated over a picture of a beach at sunset. In the middle of the screen were four white boxes to enter a destination, arrival date, departure date, and number of guests. Izzy typed “Wellesley” into the destination. She chose tomorrow for the arrival date and the day after for the departure date. In the box for number of guests, Izzy typed “4.” Because that was the perfect number for her house. Four people.
A list of homes popped up and right at the top was Izzy’s house. It was strange to be both sitting inside her house and looking at it on the website. Her hands trembled as she scrolled down. The first picture showed the outside of her house glowing in the sun. There was the door that her mom had painted bright red, the historical plaque with “1911,” and the maple tree where they tied Row’s leash to a spike in the ground.
Next were a series of interior pictures. The kitchen with the wood shelves that her dad had installed himself, the stools that her mom found at a yard sale and painted with the leftover red paint from the front door, the living room with Row’s favorite napping chair. Then came her parents’ room, Nate’s room, and Izzy’s own room. She recognized them all. But at the same time, every room looked different than normal. There were vases of flowers in random places, and the beds were neatly made. A navy-blue lamp sat on a normally empty side table, and a cream blanket was folded across a normally bare couch. In Nate’s room, the floor was spotless and the soccer trophies on his shelf were lined up like neat little toy soldiers.
Izzy remembered her mom taking these pictures. A few weeks ago, she’d come home from school to find the hallways cluttered with picture frames, patterned pillows, and stacks of books. “I’m taking pictures for my website,” her mom had explained. “I need the rooms to look perfect.” Izzy had been annoyed to find her desk cleaned off and the butterfly tin moved to her closet. But she’d checked her desk drawer and her drawings were just as she left them. So she hadn’t given the pictures much thought.
But now she realized that the pictures weren’t only for her mom’s interior-design website. They were also for VRBO.
VRBO was what her mom was checking yesterday on the computer.
Renting their home was the idea she was talking about with Phoebe’s mom.
And now it was actually happening.
Izzy walked away from the computer. Away from the perfect pictures of her home and Dori’s make-believe world of hearts and happiness, up to her bedroom. She was lying on her bed, staring at her stickers, when her mom knocked on the door.
“Izzy, can I come in?”
“Okay,” said Izzy.
Her mom stacked the pillows that Izzy had tossed on the floor into a neat pile. She
rotated the shade of her lamp so that the seam faced the wall. Then she sat on the edge of Izzy’s bed and put her hand on Izzy’s leg. There was a blanket between her mom’s hand and Izzy’s leg, but Izzy felt her mom’s fingers wrap around her thigh.
“You know, Iz,” said her mom. “It always feels weird to knock on your door.”
“Why?”
“I’m just not used to it. I don’t think I’ll ever be used to it.”
“I’m twelve, Mom. Twelve-year-olds are allowed to close their doors.”
“That doesn’t mean their moms have to like it.”
Izzy didn’t say anything. The silence felt sad, like something had gone missing underneath Izzy’s bed. A teddy bear, or maybe her stuffed lamb. Her mom ran her thumb across Izzy’s forehead. Did she feel the tiny bumps that Izzy noticed when she looked in the mirror? Is that why she looked so sad?
Izzy wanted her mom to move her hand and leave it right there. Both. At the same time. Opposites.
“It’s a lot to take in, huh?” said her mom.
Izzy shrugged.
“This house stuff is going to be okay, I promise. It’s only one week. Then we’ll be back like nothing ever happened.”
“I know,” lied Izzy. It wasn’t the idea of moving out for a week that was horrible; it was the idea of someone else moving in. Someone else sleeping in her bed, looking at her sticker door, and sitting at her desk. What if it was a sweaty teenage boy who left his stinky socks in piles, like Nate? Or a nose picker who flicked his dried snot, like Kyle at school?
“Or if there’s something else that’s bothering you,” continued her mom, “you can tell me. I know things aren’t the way they used to be with Phoebe.”
“Phoebe? Nothing’s wrong with Phoebe.” Izzy twisted around so that her mom’s hand fell off her leg. Of course, on top of everything, her mom had to bring up Phoebe. As if something dramatic happened yesterday, instead of it being one more day in the slow leak of their best friend status shriveling to nothing.
“Okay, good,” said her mom. “Because I was worried you were feeling badly about your friendship with her.”
Stick With Me Page 4