by Beth Turley
“It wasn’t her idea,” I say.
Daniella’s eyes flicker to the sliding door and then the floor.
“Did Mom ask you to make rice, then?”
“No. I wanted to make it for you. I know it’s your favorite.”
Her face pinches. She studies the smoke alarm like it might go off again. Through the open windows, I can hear Jac and Ben talking outside. A cold breeze slips in with their voices.
“Well. Thanks. I guess.” Her eyes shift to the window. “And tell Jac I said…”
Daniella’s voice drifts off. She leaves the kitchen without finishing her sentence.
“This is Aaron, by the way,” I call to her before she can get up the stairs. She turns around with one hand on the banister. Aaron lifts his arm like it weighs ten pounds and waves weakly.
“Hi,” she says, and then she’s gone.
I pour the oil from the pot into the jar mom keeps near the stove. Buela has a jar like it too. Mom says that when I have a kitchen of my own, I’ll have a jar for leftover oil by the stove. But maybe I won’t. I can’t even make rice.
Aaron and I start to clean up the kitchen in silence, as if we’re the two who yelled at one another. Maybe I should tell him a story about the Chordays and the way we used to be.
Did you see that poster of the castle on Jac’s wall? I’d ask. We used to think we could transport ourselves to the kingdom inside it. We would press our fingers into the paper, close our eyes, and wait for the wall to suck us into a place where only the four of us would live.
Aaron’s face is stopped somewhere between smiling and sad. Like he’d be ready to cheer me up or cry with me, whichever I needed. I add understands to my set of Aaron Facts.
“So about those nachos?” he asks, going with the cheering-up approach.
I laugh a little and hand him the adobo. He puts it into the cabinet. He’s tall enough to reach the top shelf. When we finish cleaning, I lead us out the sliding door. Jac and Ben sit on the steps sharing a pair of headphones. The air has an edge to it, but I guess it wouldn’t be late fall in Mapleton if it didn’t. I sit next to Jac, and Aaron takes the spot next to Ben. We make one line on the wide, wooden step.
“What are you listening to?” I ask.
Ben unplugs the headphones from his phone, and the song starts playing on speaker: “I’ll meet you out in Elmtown. Say you won’t let me down.”
“Good choice,” Aaron says.
Jac leans her weight into my side. She can act like her heart is shriveled and black all she wants. I know that it’s giant, and that it cares, and that there’s a little piece that’s broken because of Daniella too.
The four of us sit outside for a while, under the pitch-black sky.
November 28
I get the same text message every day.
“I’m here if you need me,” followed by three moon-phase emojis and a koala face.
Every day I text back, “Thanks, Jac.”
I have a picture taped to my mirror of two-year-old me holding Jac for the first time. I remember thinking of her as my little doll to dress up and play house with.
Until she grew up and became the exact opposite of a little doll.
Sometimes I worry she’ll end up like me, carrying something dark and forceful inside. Something that pulls other people down if they stand too close.
I don’t know why she still tries, even after all the things I’ve said when I was too sad or tired or numb to be nice. Eventually she’ll see that I’m not worth her koala emojis. And then she won’t be there anymore.
27 Tourist
Dad takes Jac and me to the Mapleton Mall. The stores have giant holiday sale signs in their windows. 50% OFF (SELECT STYLES). BUY ONE GET ONE HALF OFF (EXCLUSIONS APPLY). I try not to think about the missing halves.
“I have a few things to grab.” Dad reaches into his pocket. He pulls out a list and two twenty-dollar bills. “If you find these for your mom, go ahead and buy them.”
“Or what about this, Uncle Paul?” Jac says. “We steal the gifts and get chased by the mall cop on his Segway.”
“You could. But let’s try not to.”
Dad loves the holidays. He goes out before the sun comes up on Black Friday and makes Daniella and me close our eyes when he comes home with shopping bags. He takes us to see the house by Buela’s condo that sets their lights to music at least twice. We celebrate Three Kings’ Day in January too, because Mom says it keeps us connected to our Puerto Rican heritage. I like putting grass in front of my bedroom door for the kings’ camels that are supposed to stop by.
On Three Kings’ Day two years ago, Daniella and I were in the space between our rooms. She stood with her arms crossed, studying the blue plates of tangled-up grass.
“There’s not enough,” she said.
“How hungry do you think these camels are going to be?” I asked, laughing. But Daniella’s face stayed creased with seriousness.
“They have a long journey, Cassi. And it’s our job to fuel them. We need more.” She disappeared into her room and came back with two big sweatshirts and some scarves. “Put this on.”
I pulled Daniella’s gray Eliza T. Dakota sweatshirt over my head. She wrapped a scarf around my neck until I was bundled like a mummy.
“Follow me,” she said. As if I wouldn’t follow her anywhere.
We trampled down the stairs. Mom and Dad were on the couch watching Jeopardy! The living room smelled like hot chocolate.
“What are you doing?” Mom asked while we put our boots on at the front door.
“Our duty,” Daniella said. She took my hand and pulled me into the yard. The night was bitter cold, and the sky was swarmed with stars. I breathed it all in—the wintery air, the pine tree strung with lights near our front door, the feeling of being on a mission with my sister.
“Now what?” I asked.
Daniella squatted down and tugged handfuls of grass out of the ground, then stuck them into the pocket of her hoodie.
“You take some too, Cass,” she said. I bent down next to her and gathered my own bundles of camel food. The grass was cold but somehow still soft.
Daniella decided our pockets were stuffed enough, so we went back inside and up the stairs. We added the new grass to the piles in front of our doors. Now the plates were so full that some of the grass spilled onto the carpet.
When we walked downstairs again, Mom had our hot chocolate ready. The four of us sat in the living room with our fingers wrapped around steaming mugs and tried to answer Jeopardy! questions before the contestants.
I doubt Daniella will care about the camels’ well-being this year. When I woke up on Black Friday, Dad’s car was still in the driveway. The house by Buela’s condo hasn’t put up their lights yet.
I read the list Dad gave me.
Sudoku puzzle books.
That new biography—see if Cassi knows what it’s called.
Dark-roast coffee.
Things Mom needs for long days at Kindly Vines. I stuff the list into my pocket.
“I’ll meet you in the food court in an hour. Call if you need anything.” Dad leaves us and goes into the shoe store. If it were last year, he would have made sure I wasn’t looking.
Jac and I start walking in the other direction. Tinsel snakes around the pillars, and Santa’s workshop is set up on the lower level. “All I Want for Christmas Is You” plays from the speakers.
“Ben would be belting this if he were here,” Jac says. She pulls off her knit hat. The static makes her hair stick straight up. Blond is starting to show through the blue, like faded denim jeans. I’ve been tracking the color since that day we went sledding, and so far she hasn’t dyed it again.
I laugh. “He totally would.”
At least some things don’t change. My holiday spirit lifts. Even if we don’t drink hot chocolate on the couch or rip grass from the ground under a star-studded sky, even if Buela’s neighbor never puts up their musical lights, we’ll still set plates for the camels outs
ide our doors. Three feet apart.
We walk into the calendar and game store, the one that only gets set up during the holidays. It’s big inside, for a store that only sells two things.
“We’re looking for sudoku,” I tell Jac.
“Cat calendar. Got it.” She disappears into the calendar section. I roll my eyes and start searching for the activity books. They’re in the back corner. A whole shelf is dedicated to sudoku. I picture Mom at the kitchen table doing a puzzle and sipping the dark-roast coffee I’ll buy her. Whenever I see her like that, I’m reminded of where I get my love of numbers.
I bring two advanced-level books to the register. The cashier’s name tag says BRIANA. She looks a little older than Daniella and wears a bracelet with dangly charms. I see a B and a flower and the Puerto Rican flag. A stand in San Juan sold ones just like it. The charms crash into each other when she reaches for my money.
“Have you ever been to El Morro?” I ask her.
“In San Juan?” Briana opens the change drawer.
“Yes. The citadel.”
“No, my family’s from Bayamón. San Juan is full of tourists.” She holds my bag out. “Have a good one.”
She’s already looking at the customer behind me. I snatch the bag of sudoku books.
Jac is rearranging price stickers in the calendar section. I pull her out of the store. A little orange tab with $9.99 sticks to her finger.
“What is wrong with you?” She presses the price sticker into my forehead.
“Nothing.”
Except that when I felt most at home in Puerto Rico, I guess I was also being a tourist. I wish that I’d bought one of those charm bracelets with the flag, so that Briana would’ve known I was Puerto Rican too. So that everybody would.
I peel the sticker off my face and throw it into the garbage.
“Let’s go to the coffee shop,” I say.
I wait for Jac to make a comment, but she doesn’t. The speakers play a holiday song with no words. We take the escalator, and I watch the first floor come into view inch by inch as we make our way down. We’re wedged between a man holding a big box with the image of a blender on each side, and a couple with a small girl wearing a velvet dress. A mall in December is a good reminder of how many people there are in the world. Jac jumps off when we get to the bottom, even though it clearly says to watch your step.
“Is that Aaron?” Jac asks. We get closer to the couches arranged near the escalator. “Of course it is. He’s a skyscraper.”
I follow her. Aaron stands by a gray couch with a plastic Old Navy bag in each hand. He’s looking toward the giant tree set up near Santa’s workshop. Jac calls out his name so loud, he jumps.
“Quiet down or you’ll scare the reindeer,” he says.
“Don’t worry. I already set them free,” Jac replies.
It seems like the kind of thing that would make Aaron laugh. Instead he’s quiet and looks over his shoulder. A man with a bushy brown beard sits on the couch behind him, writing urgently in a notebook.
“Dad?” Aaron says. His dad keeps writing. “Dad.” He says it more harshly than before. Mr. Kale looks up.
“Oh. Wow. Sorry. I sunk into it for a minute.” He blinks a bunch of times.
“These are my friends Cassi and Jac.” Aaron points to each of us.
“We aren’t really friends,” Jac says. I elbow her.
“Honesty is good.” Mr. Kale closes the notebook in his lap. It’s one of those basic red spiral-bounds that stores sell for ninety-nine cents before school starts. “Memoir Ideas” is written on the cover. It reminds me of Daniella’s Thoughts diary.
“That’s what I’ve been saying!” Jac smiles. The girl in the velvet dress starts crying at Santa’s workshop.
“I apologize for being a bit distracted. Had to see where this burst of inspiration took me.”
“The Mapleton Mall inspired you?” I ask. There are a ton more inspiring things about Mapleton than this mall. I think of the Founders’ Day fireworks in June. When they shoot off the weeping-willow-looking ones, I imagine the sparks falling around me like glittering rain.
Is that inspiring? Is that something to put in a memoir? I wonder if The Chemical Property of Life could explain the science behind weeping willow fireworks.
“Too many people around for there to be nothing to uncover.” Mr. Kale sticks his pen into the notebook’s spiral binding. “Good thing. I was about ready to give up on Mapleton.”
Aaron’s eyes look like they could burn holes in his Old Navy bags. His hands are tight around the plastic.
“There are a lot of good things here,” I say. Mr. Kale holds up the Memoir Ideas notebook.
“And we intend to find her.” He pulls Aaron into the crook of his elbow even though Aaron is a few inches taller.
Her? He must have meant “them” or “it” or “stories.”
“See you at school,” Aaron mumbles as they walk away.
“See you,” I say to his back.
Jac clicks her tongue. “And you say I’m bizarre.” She walks toward the gourmet coffee shop. The sweet smells of caramel and vanilla slip out of its golden doors.
Mr. Kale’s words repeat in my head. Ready to give up on Mapleton. I guess I’ve been too mesmerized by Aaron’s stories to realize how they all end.
He leaves.
Maybe I’m not the only one who has felt like a tourist.
Winter
28 Ugly Sweaters
On the Saturday before Christmas, I sit on my bed under a blanket that has princesses and jeweled magic mirrors on it. The fleece is so worn that the princesses don’t have faces anymore. Last winter on this same weekend, Daniella and I helped Buela make cookies for the soup kitchen at Saint Anthony’s. The counters at the condo were covered in trays of mantecaditos, butter-colored cookies with sprinkles or guava paste on top. Daniella and I kept sneaking some when Buela’s back was turned, and then rearranging them to cover up what we’d done. Buelo was watching us from his recliner the whole time. When we noticed him, he put one finger over his mouth—Shh. We knew he wouldn’t tell.
Buela isn’t making cookies this year. She’s spending her Saturday at a church service in Kindly Vines’s small chapel, a room with two pews and a cross on the wall. Daniella is going to a high school party.
Someone knocks on my door.
“Who is it?”
The door eases open before anyone answers. It’s Daniella. She wears a zebra print bathrobe and a towel on her head.
“Hey,” she says.
“Hey.” My heart thumps with surprise.
I think back to the last time she was in my room, sitting on my bed.
Head bent over my hands while she painted my nails + a waft of coconut-mint body spray + curls like a curtain falling forward = The Daniella I still try to hold on to.
“Are you busy?” she asks.
I glance at the Math Olympics workbook on my lap. It’s open to a half-finished problem. If one bird sings every twenty seconds, a second every thirty, and a third every ten, how many times will they sing together in three minutes?
“Not really.”
“Mom said to invite you to this party. You don’t have to come.”
I would go anywhere she invited me, even if it was Mom’s idea.
“I’ll come.”
“ ’Kay. Wear an ugly holiday sweater.”
She leaves before I can ask what that means. I squeeze myself into a ball so that my happiness stays in, feeling like a fourth bird in that math problem. One that sings until its lungs collapse.
* * *
The party is at Jenna’s house, on the street next to ours, so we walk. I count the words we say back and forth. We almost reach a hundred.
“Everyone is going to wear an ugly sweater?” I ask. I picked out a red-and-white-striped sweatshirt, because it looked like a candy cane.
“Yup, that’s the whole point.” Daniella’s sweater says “Feliz Navidad.”
“I’m happy to be going
with you,” I blurt. The words make me feel like a little kid wishing on snowflakes.
“Me too, Cass.”
I imagine the wall in Daniella’s chest piecing itself back together. Maybe this is what things will be like now. Instead of baking cookies we’ll walk together to high school parties with themes. I guess I can get used to the fluttery feeling in my stomach.
We make it to Jenna’s house. The windows look like the carved face of a jack-o’-lantern, bright but eerie. Daniella walks in without knocking. Jenna is in the front hall wearing a sweater with a stocking sewn on. Her smile fades a little when she sees me.
“Oh, hey, Cassi. Wasn’t expecting you.” She adjusts her short black skirt. Her tights have diamond patterns.
“Mom made me bring her. But she’ll be cool.” Daniella stares me down. “Won’t you?”
I nod, but how can I be cool in an ugly sweater?
I bounce around with Daniella for a while, standing quietly while she goes from conversation to conversation. At some point she leaves for the drink table and I lose her. Jenna has a cookie bar set up in her kitchen. I wander over and fill a napkin with tree-shaped sugar cookies. I try not to think about hot trays of mantecaditos on Buela’s counter, Buelo watching us, Daniella and me with guava paste on our hands.
I find a spot on the couch downstairs and eat the cookies one after another. Hopefully this is what Daniella meant by being cool. The basement smells musty, and the couch cushions are covered in white cat hair.
A blond boy in a Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer sweater sits next to me. Rudolph’s nose is a small round bulb that flashes.
“Haven’t seen you around before,” he says.
“I’m Daniella’s sister,” I say.
He inspects my face and every stripe on my candy cane sweater. I feel trapped under a magnifying glass in the sun.
“Really? You don’t look alike.”
I stuff a sugar cookie into my mouth and chew until he goes away.
It tastes like cardboard.