The amazing part was right before that, when my body wasn’t only cooperating, it was leading the way. When every muscle and joint and skin cell came together under the same current and did what they were meant to do: Move. Touch. Fall. Feel. Fly. And I thought, This is what a body can do.
That was the best part of the game.
“You okay?” Nasrah asked. She pulled me to my feet, wincing like she could feel the bruise forming, too.
“Yeah,” I said, laughing, tears in my eyes with every step.
“That’s gonna hurt.”
“Yeah.” I looked down to examine my shin, where the lump was already growing. “It was awesome.”
CHAPTER 33
Mom and Melinda Oates declare it’s a sign from the universe that there is a night where Ben Oates is in town and there are no sporting events, music lessons, board meetings, or other events on either family’s calendar. This is not strictly true, because Tyler is supposed to be at a hockey scrimmage, but Mom decides to ignore it because Melinda Oates has asked us all to dinner and maybe the universe didn’t have the updated hockey schedule.
“Whose house are we going to again?” Tyler asks. He’s on his third shirt in ten minutes. Mom wasn’t satisfied when she told him to wear something other than a dirty old Chicago Blackhawks T-shirt and he came back in a clean old Chicago Blackhawks T-shirt, so he’s returned in a blue pullover that doesn’t say a team but has a big Under Armour logo on the front. Mom looks at it crossly, but knows it is not going to get better than this unless she trades in Tyler for a kid who will wear something with buttons.
Luckily for me, it’s gotten cold enough to wear my gray sweater with the giant floppy cowl neck, one of two non-sweatshirts I have in case Mom needs us presentable.
“My clients, the Oateses. The older boy goes to school with Greer.”
“You’ve met them,” I remind Ty. “Except for the dad.” None of us have met the dad. People spot yetis more often than they spot Jackson’s dad, who travels twenty-nine days out of every month, including February.
Tyler’s cramming on his shoe without untying it. I realize that I never see him tie or untie his shoes. I wonder if he even knows how. Maybe he can’t button or tie. He’s wearing a pair of draw-string joggers; maybe he can’t zip, either. But once he’s dressed, he looks perfectly fine, like he was born wearing this ensemble, which fits exactly as it’s supposed to. It’s how Ty always looks. I bet he’s never spent five seconds wondering if his pants are too tight or his boobs look too big. “Why are we going there?” he demands.
“Melinda wants to have us over to thank me for all the help resettling.” She says it with a pleased smile, like she can’t help that she’s so wonderful.
“She does know that you get paid for that, right?” I ask.
“People appreciate when you go the extra mile,” Mom says. I know that Mom gets reimbursed sixty cents for every mile she drives for a client, so driving extra miles translates directly to income for her, but I don’t mention this. She won’t think it’s funny, someone will have to explain the phrase “go the extra mile” to Tyler, and Dad has just popped in from work. “We were about to leave without you,” she says.
“Where’re we going?”
Mom gives him a giant eye roll because she has told all of us thirty times that we are going to the Oateses’ house for dinner. She and I are the only ones who are properly obsessing about it.
Mom is excited, because she loves people in general, and new people in particular, especially when she can check out their houses and furniture.
I am lukewarm on people in general, even if I’m rather enthusiastic about one in particular. I am also nervous for several reasons:
I’ve never been to Jackson’s house before and that would make any reasonable person nervous. I talk to him for six minutes before math class on school days, and the bell rings before we run out of things to say. I am not convinced I can be interesting for more than seven or eight minutes. I am fairly certain he can be.
I’m not visiting Jackson’s house with reasonable people. I’m coming with these weirdos. I might be able to avoid horrible and embarrassing things on my own, but throw Ty and my mom in the mix and who knows?
I need to find and rescue Grumpy Dwarf. I have no idea how I’m going to do this.
CHAPTER 34
Ben Oates swings open the door before we even knock. He is wearing an apron over a striped button-down shirt and a pair of jeans that hang loose on his hips. He’s got brown wavy hair that’s started to recede in twin paths on either side of his forehead. He and my dad look like they could be standing next to each other in the same Nordstrom ad, like my mom shops for both of them.
“Welcome! Come on in!” Mr. Oates leans out to hold the storm door open for us, so I have to pass really close to enter. He looks like Middle-Aged Jackson, but he smells like a delicious Indian restaurant. “Ben Oates,” he says, shaking my dad’s hand. “You’re Eric.”
“I am,” Dad confirms.
“And you’re Greer and . . . Tyler?” He squints up one side of his face like he’s worried he’s gotten Ty’s name wrong. Tyler grunts a “yeah” and Mr. Oates grins. “And you are my wife’s saving grace.” He leans in to kiss Mom’s cheek, and she beams.
Jackson is nowhere to be seen. I have a tiny panic that he won’t be joining us, even though at school this morning he said, “Make sure you have a camera, because you will get a rare sighting of my dad.” (I said, “In his natural habitat?” Jackson replied, “His natural habitat is a Hilton.”)
But for someone who is making a guest appearance, he seems entirely in his element charming strangers. That must be where Jackson gets it.
“Let me get everyone a drink.” Mr. Oates strides through the house and we follow, like he’s a magnet and we are little bits of iron. “Jack and Mel just ran out to find some kokum.” We all look blank. “It’s a spice. I doubt they’re going to find it. I just got back from Bangalore and one of our partners sent me home with all her mother’s recipes. We can find most of the stuff, but there are a couple that I’m going to have to bring home with me next time.”
He leads us into the kitchen, where there is a spread of dips, breads, spreads, and fruits that looks like it is from a magazine. There are pots steaming on every burner and it smells unbelievable, like we’ve just walked into Padma Lakshmi’s kitchen. My mother is rapturously soaking it all in. Jackson’s dad hands each of my parents a glass of red wine. “Melinda said, ‘Let’s just have filets or something we know how to make,’ but where’s the fun in that? Anybody can grill a filet. Go big or go home, right?”
I steal a glance at Tyler, the conversational void, who is looking at the spread of food like it’s made of toxins and dog poop. If this is “go big,” Tyler would choose go home and eat a chicken nugget.
“Either of you want to try a banana lassi?” Mr. Oates pulls the pitcher off the blender and holds it up.
“I’ll try it.”
He smiles at me and pours some white frothy stuff in a glass. It tastes like a banana smoothie.
“None for you?” Ty shakes his head. He can’t even muster a “No, thank you.” This is Ty’s worst nightmare. So much food and none of it Flamin’ Hot Cheetos.
“I almost went to India once,” Mom says, and I realize this is kind of her nightmare, too. We’ve been here ten minutes and someone else has been talking the whole time.
“You should! Everyone should—”
“DAD!” Quinlan appears out of nowhere. She fidgets, pulling at the ends of her sleeves, which keep riding back up above her wrists.
“Don’t interrupt, sweetie.” He introduces Quinlan, who declares she already knows us.
“Is there anything else to eat? Crackers or something?”
Mr. Oates breathes loudly out of his nose. “I don’t know where your mother keeps that stuff.”
&n
bsp; Quinlan makes a show of getting a box of Triscuits. She stands next to the magazine display of appetizers and eats them straight out of the box. She’s shuffling those long legs together like a grasshopper, and I think I know the feeling. It’s what happens when your body doesn’t feel quite like it belongs to you anymore. Tyler is drooling, but she doesn’t offer any crackers.
Every time a car makes a noise outside or Quinlan kicks her foot into a cabinet door, the butterfly stands up, thinking Jackson is about to walk in. I tell her to stop acting like an idiot, but then Tyler drops his phone going for a Triscuit Quin dropped, and she pops up again. The butterfly and Tyler are both idiots.
Mr. Oates and my dad start talking about the wine, which is another stroke of bad luck for Mom, because even though she drinks it, she leaves the fancy wine talk to my dad. She is smiling and nodding along with them, but there isn’t much for her to say since by now they are deep in conversation about varietals and soil pH.
I wander back out to the living room with my banana lassi and Tyler follows. I look at the books—a lot of Reese Witherspoon’s book club picks, a bunch of Malcolm Gladwell. Ty’s found the shelf of Xbox games and is grunting in a way that makes me think he’s unimpressed.
“Wanna see my room?” Even eating a box of crackers, Quinlan can sneak up like Spider-Man.
Tyler and I follow her upstairs to a palace of fluff. She’s past that little girl pink princess phase and has moved into the jewel-colored fake fur and disco-ball phase. Her comforter looks like the skin of an aquamarine Muppet, and there are a dozen pillows shaped like lips, hearts, high-heeled shoes, birds, and the letters O, M, and G. She’s got shelves with full collections of Japanese vinyl figurines, pop culture bobbleheads, some kind of fruit characters, and one of every tiny stuffed animal that was ever sewed together. There is something on every surface.
It’s impressive that she has managed to acquire this much junk in only nine years, but also disappointing, because somewhere in this chaos of tweendom is Grumpy Dwarf. Scared and alone, probably getting grumpier by the minute. If I could find him, she’d never notice that he was missing, but I’d need a week to look for him in here.
“Let’s go to Jackson’s room,” she says.
I’m about to say “I think we should wait for Jackson,” but it doesn’t matter what I think, because she’s pushing me through the door. We hear Jackson bound up the stairs, and Quin blurts, “Greer wanted to go in your room!” The butterfly, who has been pacing back and forth since we got here, panics and points her wing at Quin.
“Yeah, I’m sure Greer really cares what’s in my room.” Jackson gives his sister a look that says he understands exactly who’s idea this was. He says, “It’s not that interesting, but come in.” His dad smelled delicious like dinner, but Jackson smells delicious like shampoo and apples and leaves.
Jackson’s room is like a tastefully decorated monastery. There’s a bed, dresser, desk, and bookcase that look like they were made from the kind of trees money grows on. The bed is covered in a gray-and-blue-striped wool blanket. There are two big photographs hanging, one of a colorful market and the other of a misty lake. The scrawled pencil signatures on the mats say they were taken by Jackson’s father. There are a lot more of these kind of photos around the house. I wonder if Jackson’s family ever thinks his dad spends a lot of time finding things to take pictures of when he’s supposed to be traveling for work.
Jackson’s laptop and some school books are on the desk, but there’s not much that seems personal, except a single row of things on the top of the bookshelf, which don’t fit the generic feel of the rest of the room.
I step closer to look up at them. There’s a Lego boat made from different color bricks with a Batman driving; a Beanie Baby iguana, fairly dirty; a cup that says Monterey Bay Aquarium; one of those paper frames with a blurry picture of kids on a roller coaster; and a few other things. It’s a weird collection, but it is most definitely a collection, because everything else looks like it was put here by an unimaginative interior designer. I stand on my tiptoes and read the plate on a small tennis trophy: AUSTIN FALL CLASSIC, 2ND PLACE BOYS 12U DBLS.
“Jackson has a lot more trophies but he doesn’t put them out,” says Quinlan, who has climbed on top of the desk and is reaching out toward the bookcase to grab the iguana. She has to lean on the bookcase with one hand to reach far enough and everything rocks a little. Jackson reaches up without effort, shoves it an inch out of her grasp, then lifts her down. I wonder if the iguana was what she wanted on the morning she hit him with the can opener. I wonder why he won’t just let her have a Beanie Baby iguana.
“Go ask Dad when dinner’s going to be,” he says.
“DAD, WHEN’S DINNER?” she screams from the doorway.
“Just go, Quin.” She puts one hand on her hip and stares at him. He says, “Mom brought you an Izze.”
“What kind?”
“It’s a surprise.”
Quin stands there, biting her lip. It must be hard to choose between torturing us and a soda.
“If it’s blackberry, save me some,” I whisper. Her eyes get big and she nods. “Blackberry is the best one.” We’re in this thing together now. She skitters off to investigate.
For a brief second I wonder what’s happened to Ty, but I don’t want to wreck this moment worrying about my brother. He has probably gone back downstairs to see if Quinlan dropped any more Triscuits.
Now it’s just me and Jackson. No hallway full of people rushing to class or table of flirty friends or moms comparing birth stories. I notice how horizontal that bed looks. I notice how big his hands look. I notice how lovely his mouth looks and how his lips aren’t even a little chapped. They’re probably so smooth. The butterfly starts to do a pole dance, and I tell her to calm herself down. This is an obligatory family dinner.
“Probably not exactly what you want to be doing on a Friday night,” Jackson says.
Jackson Oates is terrible at reading minds. It is exactly what I want to be doing on a Friday night.
“Your dad must be a good cook,” I say instead.
“My mom would say he’s an elaborate cook. He cooks about twice a year, like this—a whole day and a million ingredients. But I’m not sure if he could make a hamburger or pancakes or whatever.”
“That’s too bad, because Tyler only eats hamburgers or pancakes or whatever.”
“There’s always white bread and Cocoa Puffs”—he shrugs—“for when Quinlan goes on hunger strike.” He sits down on the bed, all the way to one end so there is room for me, but I sit on the edge of his desk instead, and take a sip of my banana lassi.
“Do you like that?”
“It’s good. Like a banana smoothie.”
We talk about the weirdest foods we’ve tried and not tried, which leads to a discussion of places we’ve been (me = New York, Tuscany, Florida. Jackson = everywhere). The conversation gets easier, more like when we are standing in the hall before math and less like I am in his bedroom about to lose control and launch myself into him.
“So where are the rest of the trophies?” I ask, nodding up at the bookshelf.
“I don’t know why Quin said that about trophies.”
“Is there a special trophy case somewhere? Do they even fit in a trophy case?” Jackson smiles and sticks out his tongue at me. “Ooh, is there an Oates family hall of fame?”
“Oh yeah. There’s a special wing with all the trophies. I’m surprised Quin didn’t show you. There are so many trophies. I even got a trophy for having so many trophies.”
“Really? What’s on the top of that trophy? A trophy?”
“Actually, I got a second-place trophy for having the second most trophies, but once I got it, it made me tied for first.”
“Nuh-uh, because the first-place guy would have gotten another trophy, too, so he’d still be ahead.”
“You just ma
de that an equation, didn’t you?”
“n+1, where n is the winning number of trophies. You had n-1, and then when you added one, you had n but he had n+1.”
“Well, you’re wrong, anyway.”
“Oh yeah? I don’t think so. If there were math trophies, I’d have n squared trophies.”
“You’re wrong because the first-place winner got a certificate, not a trophy. So we both had n trophies. And you’re doubly wrong because the first-place winner was a girl.”
“Really? The person with the most trophies—”
“Tied for the most trophies.”
“The person tied with you for the most trophies is a girl, and now she’s got one more certificate than you?”
“Oh no. Don’t even get me started on certificates.”
I laugh and dribble lassi from the straw. It lands, as everything does, in the middle of a boob. I wipe at the lassi with my sleeve and try to arrange the cowl neck to cover it. Thank god it was banana and not mango or strawberry or something bright. I’m trying to divert attention from Maude and Mavis, not go over them with a highlighter.
Melinda calls Jackson down to set the table before I can ask more about the things he’s keeping out of reach of Quinlan. I excuse myself to the bathroom.
As I’m blotting the lassi spot with a wad of toilet paper, I peek into the shower. There’s a high shelf with matching bottles of Malin+Goetz shampoo and body wash, and a lower shelf with a dozen shampoos and conditioners that say “Sugar Cookie,” “Watermelon Kiwi,” and “Prevents Lice.” I am reaching in to take one quick whiff of Jackson’s shampoo when Tyler pops in beside me.
“Look!” he whispers. He shows me a pair of earbuds that look like the heads of Mario and Luigi. They were his first night of Hanukkah gift last year, which was kind of a preview, because every other gift he got was related to video games, too (including Ready Player One, which I correctly guessed would trick him into reading a book).
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