by Brodi Ashton
Christiane as she’s shaking the hand of the leader of the Taliban: “Okay. Friends?”
Taliban leader as he takes her hand: “Good friends.”
Not that I was comparing Raf to the leader of the Taliban. That would be ridiculous.
Besides, even if we were friends, his father would probably have something to say about it. If I had been reading him correctly, he definitely didn’t approve of my family’s status, or lack thereof. Or maybe it was simply me he didn’t approve of.
I decided to text Charlotte about it.
Me: Do I come off badly in front of parents?
Charlotte: Not that I can think of. You’re great with parents. Although there was that one time you offered to teach my mom the proper uses of the words “lay,” “lie,” and “laid.”
Me: Was she offended?
Charlotte: That a 12-yr-old would be teaching her grammar? No. Not offended at all. ;)
Me: It just so happened that I had a great and easy way to remember it, and to be fair, I waited until she had used it incorrectly at least a hundred times. She likes me, though, right?
There was a long pause this time. I was sure it was just because Charlotte was in and out while getting ready for bed.
Charlotte: Of course. But I think she’s had to get used to your ways.
I waited for a moment, because in this instant, I wanted to text her more about Raf, but not in a story kind of way. More about how he’d asked me not to get involved with another guy. And how he’d come to my house. And how he liked Michael.
Instead, I just texted her Okay, thanks. Good night.
The following school week meant more fluff stories, which I wrote without complaint because I knew something Jesse didn’t know—I had a good story coming down the pipeline. One that could win me the Bennington.
I didn’t bother telling Jesse anything about it because, knowing him, he would just assign the rest of the story to someone else. I wanted to wait until I had everything I needed. This was what Professor Ferguson was talking about. I was making this story my own. Making it a story only I could write.
Raf and I continued to share notes. He even started to help me with all the things about chemistry that I didn’t understand, which were basically all the things about chemistry.
Maybe now he would invite me to their weekend party himself, instead of my having to steal his phone, but by the time Friday came around, he hadn’t mentioned anything about their next party. Didn’t “good friends” mean getting invited to parties?
During chemistry, I glanced at his phone peeking out from his pocket. Maybe, if I used enough stealth—
“Come to my house tonight,” Raf said.
“Huh?” I said, startled.
“Come to my house. I have . . . notes there I need to type.”
I tilted my head. “On a Friday night?”
“And I’d love to play a game of Scrabble with you and Alejandro. And Michael, too. You said he plays Scrabble, yes?”
“Yes,” I said.
“Yes,” he repeated.
“Yes,” I confirmed.
“Okay. So can I bring a car to pick you and Michael up this evening?”
“Why aren’t you asking Giselle?”
“She doesn’t play Scrabble. Eight o’clock okay?”
“Okay,” I said.
Scrabble on a Friday night? Instead of a raging party? The invitation sort of baffled me. Maybe all his friends were going out of town.
I was pretty sure a game of Scrabble with our brothers was not the way to get the story I was looking for, but I wasn’t about to turn down a chance for research. Besides, even if it didn’t lead to anything, I had to admit it sounded fun. I also had to admit I wanted to see Raf again.
Later that afternoon, my dad caught me fixing my hair in the mirror. “What are you up to?”
“Michael and I are going to Raf’s house to play Scrabble with him and his brother.”
He arched an eyebrow. “Looks like you’re making friends.”
I turned toward him. “Yeah, I guess.” I didn’t want to tell him that they were subjects of a story, and I didn’t let myself think about why not.
Michael poked his head into the bathroom. “Scrabble!”
I nodded and smiled. “Yeah, bud. Scrabble.”
An hour later, a long black limousine pulled up in front of my house and Raf stepped out of the back, looking like he was ready for a movie shoot and not a Scrabble game.
Michael bounded out our front door and hopped right into the backseat, but I hesitated. “C’mon, Pip,” Raf said. “It’s just Scrabble.”
He was right. It was just Scrabble. Nobody was using anybody. It was just Scrabble.
Twenty minutes later, I was sitting in one of the embassy parlors with Alejandro, Raf, and Michael. Michael was wandering back and forth, taking in the new surroundings.
“It always takes him a little while to adjust,” I said.
Raf nodded. “I get it.”
We picked our Scrabble letters and the four of us started a game. Once the game was going, Michael sat down and began to focus. Scrabble was one of his safe areas. When it got to be his turn, he played the word “box” on a triple-word spot.
“What? Are you kidding me?” Michael said, imitating one of his favorite YouTube gamers. He went on to answer himself. “Nope. I’m not.”
I smiled, but Raf laughed out loud, which made me laugh too.
Raf played the word “mush” and then I added an S at the beginning to make “smush” and to reach the double-word button.
“‘Smush’ is not a word,” Raf said, the corner of his mouth quirking up.
“Yes, it is.”
“Use it in a sentence.”
I sighed. “Fine. ‘There wasn’t a lot of room. So we had to smush.’”
He looked to Alejandro. “Help me out here.”
Alejandro typed into his phone. “Valid. It is a blended word from ‘smash’ and ‘mush.’”
Raf shook his head playfully. “You Americans and your made-up words.”
It wasn’t until that moment that I thought about how difficult Scrabble would be in a second language.
We played for a couple of hours. Despite Michael’s strong beginning, Alejandro was winning, which didn’t make Michael too happy. I was just proud of him for staying in the game. It was hard for him to accept losing.
Raf took another turn. “‘Hadj.’ For fifty-six points.”
Michael snorted. “‘Hadj’ is a word every Scrabble player knows.”
Raf smiled. “You’re probably right.” He ruffled Michael’s hair. Most people were scared to touch Michael, maybe because they were unsure how he would react, but Raf seemed to have a read on him. Which made me like him even more. Which made me confused. Which made me focus on the game extra hard.
At the end, we tallied up the points. Alejandro came in first, followed by Michael, then Raf, and then me. I never was very good at Scrabble. Alejandro then invited Michael to look at a new game he had on his iPad. I excused myself to look for a bathroom.
“Left, then right, then first door on the right,” Raf said.
“Hey, bud,” I said to Michael, “I’ll be right back.”
Michael didn’t respond. He was enthralled with whatever it was Alejandro was showing him.
“He’ll be fine,” Raf said.
I left and tried to follow Raf’s directions, but the mazelike hallways were confusing and I ended up in front of a wooden door that looked like every other wooden door in the place.
I tried the handle and the door opened up into a large ornate bedroom, decorated in the deep red and mustard yellow of the Spanish flag. On the wall above the head of the bed was a painting of a couple, the man I recognized as Raf’s father. The woman on his arm was beautiful, with long black hair that fell in loose waves just past her shoulders. It must’ve been Raf’s mom. Brilliant gene pool, the kind people probably paid for.
On the opposite side of the room, a doo
r was partially ajar, and light streamed through the opening. Maybe this was the bathroom Raf had been referring to.
I crossed the room and as I put my hand on the doorknob, I heard a soft moan coming from the other side. It wasn’t a sexy moan, I was pretty sure. It sounded more like someone was sick.
I opened the door and there, crumpled on the marble floor beneath the sink, was a woman with dark hair. Her head was resting on the cabinet doors, and her mouth was slightly open. Her eyes were cloudy and unfocused.
Gripped loosely in her hand was a bottle filled with red pills, several of which were scattered on the floor.
My first instinct was to call for help, but in a split second, her glazed eyes focused on me with laser-sharp precision.
“Who are you?” she said.
“I’m . . . I’m . . . a friend of Rafael’s?”
She closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and said, “Get. The fuck. Out.” Then her head sank to her chest.
22
I gasped and quickly backed out of the bedroom. But before I got all the way out, I sneaked a picture of the woman. Then I backtracked back down the hall and saw another hallway I had missed on my way, and I figured that must be the one Raf had been referring to.
Did I really just snap a picture of Raf’s mom in that state?
I found the bathroom, shut myself inside, and took a bunch of deep breaths. Raf’s mother was officially the scariest woman I’d ever met. The scariest. With her dark hair and her pale face and the vitriol in her voice . . . she could’ve been a vampire. And not the hot, warm-and-fuzzy kind. The kind where you want to take your own blood out of your body and hand it over to her, because you know there’s no escaping the hell that’s about to rain down on you, and you’d rather just make a clean blood exchange than be torn apart.
She did have pills, though. And didn’t Charlotte say drugs are something I should be on the lookout for?
As I got my breathing in check, I rummaged through the cabinets of the bathroom, but it was obviously a guest bathroom, because the drawers and shelves were empty.
I opened the door and nearly ran into Raf’s fist knocking.
‘Hi,” he said. “I was worried you’d fallen in or something.”
I shook my head. “Nope. Everything is fine.” I tried to forget for a moment the encounter with his mom. “We should get going, though. It’s past Michael’s bedtime.”
Raf frowned but nodded.
I went back to the room and said good-bye to Alejandro and grabbed Michael. Raf guided us to the front door, but before we made it out, his father appeared from a hallway.
“Rafael. I didn’t know you had company.” He glanced at me and then Michael, and frowned.
Thankfully Michael hadn’t mastered reading facial cues yet. But I had. Raf’s dad looked disappointed. And now Raf himself looked guilty.
“We played Scrabble with Alejandro,” he said. “And now they’re leaving.”
“Drive safely,” his dad said.
“Oh. Um . . .” I didn’t know what to say.
“I drove them here, Papa. At least, James did.”
“Then James can drive them home. I need to speak with you.”
Raf nodded. He was uncharacteristically quiet as he walked us to the limo. He opened the door and we got in.
“I wasn’t expecting my father to be home from his trip so soon,” he said. “Good-bye, Pip.” He shut the door behind us, and that was it.
I walked inside my house more confused than I’d been in a long time. Why was Raf’s dad so upset? Why wasn’t his dad helping his mom? Why didn’t he tell either of them we were coming over? Why did he invite me in the first place?
I took Michael to his room and set out his pajamas, then started toward my own room. I passed the kitchen along the way and overheard something that made me forget the questions running through my head.
“Bankruptcy.”
It was my dad’s voice. He and my mom were at the kitchen table, speaking in low tones. I crept closer to the door and sat down against the wall just outside.
“It’s not an easy choice,” my dad said. “But it’s starting to look like our only option.”
My mom sniffled. There was a pause, and I wondered if my dad had put his arms around my mom. It seemed like something he would do.
“I know you didn’t sign up for this,” he said.
“I signed up for us.” My mom’s voice broke.
I couldn’t listen anymore. I rose and crept back to my room. My earlier confusion disappeared. Money problems had a way of making everything else so small. Despite the fact that the responsibility wasn’t mine, I still felt a heavy weight on my shoulders. I couldn’t imagine spending the rest of my life supporting the weight.
Now that I thought about it, there was no dilemma. It was simple. We had no money. We had food stamps. And now, maybe we had bankruptcy.
I needed the Bennington. Raf was my way to get it.
End of story. Whatever happened, someone with means and money could survive, and Raf had both. He would be fine. Right now, I had to be more concerned about my own survival.
On Monday, I passed Raf in the hallway.
“Hey,” I said.
He looked at me but didn’t say anything back. In Professor Wing’s class, he took a seat far away from me. I didn’t know how he would take notes, but then he took his wrist brace off and just started writing.
I guessed it was healed.
At lunch, I sat with Mack and Faroush, as usual.
“What’s with lover boy?” Mack said.
“What do you mean?” I said.
“I mean last week, he couldn’t take his eyes off you. This week he’s very interested in his own fingernails.”
I glanced over at Raf. He was indeed looking at his fingernails, as if he was choosing which one to bite.
I shrugged. “Don’t know. Besides, he wasn’t staring at me last week. He’s with Giselle.”
Mack crunched on a celery stick. “Oh, yeah. Weird that I forgot.”
The rest of the short week brought more of the same behavior from Raf. Not only did he refuse to talk to me, but he even refused to look at me. I started to panic. He was still my best source for the story. He’d provided my only in with the DI kids so far. I was pretty sure I wouldn’t get anywhere with the others, judging by how much they’ve never talked to me.
Raf was my best shot.
And for some reason, he wasn’t speaking to me.
School let out early on Wednesday for the Thanksgiving holiday. I considered throwing Raf a Hail Mary that sounded something like “Since it’s the season of gratitude, I would sure be grateful if you’d just start talking to me again and give me a story.”
But he left the campus immediately. As if he couldn’t wait to put more distance between us.
Or maybe he didn’t think of me at all.
That Saturday, I focused on earning tips at the Yogurt Shop, even though it meant singing. It was better than focusing on how I’d stalled in my story. Maybe I could do with a break from it. Maybe I was too close. Maybe another idea, an even better one, would come to me if I wasn’t thinking about the DI exposé.
Maybe I could do an exposé on the real calorie count in frozen yogurt.
IT’S LOW IN FAT, BUT IS IT HEALTHIER?
Or maybe I could do one on the meager tipping situation.
IS IT POSSIBLE TO LIVE FOR A MONTH ON YOGURT TIPS? HIGH SCHOOL STUDENT DETERMINED TO FIND OUT
Maybe.
But neither of those had the sensationalistic pull of the DI exposé.
Later that night, I browsed through the latest Post-Anons and found another section of that I Lost You poem.
I’m not sure how to walk without long legs to pace me
I am sick like I just ate a thousand baguettes
I am shivering without your arms to embrace me
I’m consumed by the rot of a thousand regrets
I sighed. Who would ever want to be in love? It sounded so pai
nful.
23
Christmas break came and Raf had yet to speak to me. I tried not to worry that I had lost my source.
I spent my break taking on extra shifts at the Yogurt Shop. I lost my voice due to all the singing of “Have a Very Dairy Christmas,” but my calves were becoming more defined from all the dancing. (I found that our tips increased with dancing.)
Gramma Weeza brought her plumber to Christmas dinner. Her face glowed the entire night, and when the plumber fixed a leaky faucet in the bathroom, my parents’ faces glowed too.
I didn’t ask them about the money situation. I figured it wasn’t the right time, considering it was the holidays. But I left small bills on the kitchen counter and in the junk drawer so my mom would find them without suspecting me. It was hardly anything.
Jesse still had us covering stories during the break, although my most exciting assignment was a snowplow ride-along. I was beginning to think that I would’ve had a better chance at a college scholarship if I had stayed at my old school, but I didn’t let myself think it for very long. Chiswick was a privilege.
On my last night of working at the Yogurt Shop before the end of break, an older man with two young kids tipped me ten dollars and requested the song, “I Will Survive.”
I started singing, and halfway through the chorus the door to the shop opened and a familiar face walked through. It was Samuel. The son of the secretary of state, Samuel.
I faltered a bit in my singing, and then kept going because . . . tips.
When I finished, the grandpa and his two little ones clapped. And then Samuel clapped. I served the grandpa and the kids.
“Hi,” Samuel said.
“Hi.” I was a little out of breath. I hadn’t seen him since the party.
“You work here?”
I smiled. “No, why?”
He laughed. “That’s cool. I thought about getting a job like this.”
“Why don’t you?”
He went quiet for a moment. “I don’t know.”
I nodded. Because you have money.