The Summer of Broken Things

by Margaret Peterson Haddix

  “But, Dad, you knew you were going to be a success regardless,” I say. “Even if you didn’t have enough money for the cab, you would have thought of something. You always do.”

  I give him my best adoring-daughter grin. But it’s like he can’t see that either. He seems to be looking straight through me. Back toward Kayla.

  “Still,” he says. “I was nobody from nowhere. I could have stayed a nobody. It’s not, it’s not—”

  “Dad, you’re not even making sense,” I say. I try to laugh, but it comes out wrong.

  “I didn’t get to fly to Aruba when I was five,” he says. “Most people don’t. It doesn’t make you any better than Kayla, that you’ve grown up flying all over the place and she hasn’t. It just means you got lucky.”

  “Because of you,” I say, grinning again. Trying to make it up to him. But he’s not listening.

  The line moves, so now we’re by the sandwiches and drinks. I grab a turkey pesto and a bottle of water. Dad gets his and Kayla’s orders, and we put everything on the counter. Dad hands the woman at the cash register his credit card. She swipes it and shakes her head.

  “That card does not work,” she says. I’m trying to decide from her accent if she’s Pakistani, like my friend Rima, or Indian like my friend Sruti. Then it registers what she said.

  “Try swiping it again,” I suggest.

  But Dad’s already pulling a different credit card from his billfold.

  “Never mind,” he says. “Try this one instead.”

  Why doesn’t he even sound surprised?

  Kayla, Not Keeping Up

  “Run!” Mr. Armisted cries behind me as we’re getting off the plane in Washington, DC. “As fast as you can!”

  My foot falters against the little gap between the plane’s doorway and the ramp pressed alongside it. There’s nothing to trip over, but I stumble anyway, bashing one shoulder against Avery’s backpack ahead of me.

  Mr. Armisted grabs my arm, steadying me. I look back to thank him, but apparently he’s serious about the running thing. He’s got his head down and his shoulders bent forward, like he’d already be sprinting full-out if I weren’t in his way.

  I face forward again, and Avery has somehow sped halfway up the exit ramp. I take three large steps, and then stop behind people crowded around a little door.

  “No—keep going!” Mr. Armisted calls behind me. “They’re waiting on gate-checked bags! We didn’t gate-check anything! Our bags are going straight to Madrid! Without us, if we don’t make this plane!”

  I’m not sure what he’s talking about—“Gate-check”? What’s that even mean?—but I don’t want him to think I’m stupid.

  “I know we’ve got to hurry,” I answer. “I’m just trying not to . . .”

  Before I can finish, run anybody over, Mr. Armisted is shoving his way through the crowd, tugging me along. He says, “Excuse me, excuse me,” again and again, but people step aside for him even before they hear him, in a way they didn’t for me. He looks rich and powerful—and handsome. Of course they step aside.

  Did they step aside for Avery, or did she just shove them out of her way? I wonder.

  It’s strange how much I want to know the answer to that.

  It’s also strange how, the whole time we were on the plane from Columbus, I wanted to tell Avery or Mr. Armisted, This isn’t the first time I’ve been on a plane, you know.

  I’d even half stammered, “Th-this—” just as we were taking off, but Avery had patted my arm and said, “It’s really cool, isn’t it? Things look so small down on the ground when you fly. Just wait till we get up in the clouds.” And then she’d glanced over at her dad, in his single seat across the aisle, as if she were really saying that for him, not me. Like she didn’t really want to be nice to me; she just wanted him to think she was.

  But I made myself agree with her, anyway, and pretended to admire the view out my window. There was no room for me to say, I flew once before, when I was two. We were in California when my dad got hurt, and my mom needed to be with him at the hospital. One of her friends, Sonia Lopez, flew me home to Grandma and Grandpa, so they could take care of me while Mom couldn’t. All their friends on the base chipped in so there’d be enough money for the flight.

  It felt like I could remember seeing clouds on that airplane ride; it felt like I could remember Grandma and Grandpa meeting us at the airport, and hugging me and hugging me. But I was only two. Maybe I just think I remember because Grandma and Grandpa and Mom have told me the story so much. Grandpa’s version always includes a line about how he’d looked right past Sonia and me when we first stepped through security, because “nobody told me it’d be some Mexican girl bringing us our granddaughter.” And then, if Mom is around, she scolds him, “I told you her name was Sonia Lopez. Wasn’t that enough of a clue? Anyhow, Sonia was Mexican American, not Mexican.” And then afterward, out of my grandparents’ earshot, Mom usually reminds me that Grandma and Grandpa don’t really mean to sound prejudiced; they just grew up in a different time period, and . . .

  And Mr. Armisted and I are falling way behind Avery as we run up the ramp toward the main part of the airport. I’ve lost sight of her blue shirt and her swinging dark blond ponytail. No, wait—there she is, stepping off the ramp into the terminal.

  “Avery! Wait up!” Mr. Armisted calls.

  “You said to run as fast as we can!” Avery calls back over her shoulder. “That’s what I’m doing!”

  She’s not even panting. My mind flashes back to one of those nature shows Mr. Lang at the nursing home likes so much. Avery is like a gazelle or maybe a cheetah: incredibly, effortlessly fast. A woman in front of her totters on high heels, and I half expect Avery to spring at the woman and bring her down, like a cheetah attacking an antelope.

  Maybe I’ve spent too much of my life watching nature shows with Mr. Lang.

  “Kayla and I aren’t soccer players,” Mr. Armisted calls to Avery. “Just stay with us. You can’t get on that plane . . . without us.”

  I kind of like it that he has to stop and gulp for air. It’s not just me slowing the Armisteds down.

  “Told you you should exercise more!” Avery calls playfully over her shoulder. She turns around and runs backward, and I swear she’s still faster than I could ever be. “I mean that for you, Dad. An old man like you, you really need your exercise. Use it or lose it!”

  Is she trying to make it so that taunt isn’t aimed at me?

  Somehow that makes me mad, anyway.

  Yeah, I know I should exercise more too, I want to spit back at her. Skinny people always think fat people should exercise more. But ever heard of genetics? Ever seen my dad? I take after the big-boned side of the family. That’s all.

  Being mad helps me run faster for a few moments, but then I slow down again. I’m really not a runner. In phys ed, when Mr. Dunham makes us run laps, I’m always in the group that clumps at the back and ends up doing half as much as everyone else, because most of the class can circle the gym twice in the time it takes me to circle it once. Even when I cheat and run as far inside the corners as I dare.

  I think Mr. Dunham knows, but he’s a heavyset guy himself. He never says anything.

  “We want Gate D4,” Mr. Armisted pants beside me, as Avery dances ahead. “We’ll have to take the shuttle up ahead—”

  “It’s there right now!” Avery calls back to us. “The sign says it’s leaving in one minute! No—fifty-nine seconds. Fifty-eight seconds. Fifty-seven . . . Oh wait, I’ll do it in Spanish. Uh, cincuenta y cuatro, cincuenta y tres . . .”

  What if she’s this annoying the whole time we’re in Spain?

  Avery reaches the doorway out to the shuttle, and turns around to urge us on: “Come on, come on—hurry!”

  I put on a burst of speed (which is a lot like saying a turtle puts on a burst of speed). Mr. Armisted grabs my arm and pulls me along. Avery reaches out and yanks him forward too. For a second it feels like we’re a team, linked together. All three of us
stumble through the doorway, and a split second later, the door swishes shut behind me, shoving a gasp of hot air at me.

  “You almost missed it!” Avery scolds. She’s looking at her dad, not me, but I know who she’s really accusing. Just like that, any link we had is broken.

  She’s not even sweating.

  Mr. Armisted bends forward, his hands on his knees. He’s sweating, the droplets beading along his hairline. He gulps in air like someone who’s just run a marathon.

  “Yeah, well”—he pauses to gulp in another breath—“I could run fast too, when I was fourteen. Just wait until you’re fifty-four.”

  He doesn’t look at me either, but he might as well have said, I could run fast when I was sixteen, too. Any teenager should be a good runner. I have an excuse, being so old.

  I want to yell, I’m sorry! I didn’t mean to hold you back! Go ahead and say it: I’m fat and out of shape! Isn’t that what you’re thinking?

  But speaking those words would be too much like that time in third grade when our teacher, Miss Nolan, who was straight out of college, had us write about “what our mommies and daddies do.” I wrote, My daddy lies in a bed. He can’t talk. Sometimes he grunts. My mommy says that’s how he says, “I love you.” But his brain doesn’t work right anymore. If he doesn’t know how to say easy words like “I” and “love” and “you,” how does he even know what love is? How does he even know who I am? I don’t think he knows anything.

  And then there were conferences between Mom and Miss Nolan and the school psychologist, and then between me and a school psychologist. And Grandma and Grandpa kept asking me, “Why didn’t you just write about your daddy being a marine? How he went through training to hunt down terrorists and keep Americans safe? How he joined up because he was such a patriot? You should be proud of your daddy!”

  And I said, “Miss Nolan didn’t say to write about what our mommies and daddies did. We were supposed to write about what they do.” I was a little too proud of knowing the difference between past and present tense.

  I was a dumb third grader. I didn’t know yet that sometimes the last thing people want to hear is the truth.

  “Is this shuttle ever going to leave?” Avery asks, peering toward the front, where there’s a man in a little cab—the driver, I guess. “We’ve only got ten minutes. What if we waste it all standing around on this shuttle?”

  It’s almost as if the driver hears her, because just then, the shuttle eases away from the terminal behind us.

  “Catch your breath, and then let’s get as close as we can to the door on the other side,” Mr. Armisted says. He’s not panting so hard anymore. “This is going to be really close.”

  Avery starts shoving her way through the crowd immediately. Mr. Armisted follows her, and I trail behind.

  I can see out the shuttle windows, to airplanes lined up along the runways, and to other shuttles coming toward us. The shuttles have long rows of wheels beneath them; they look like ungainly, oversize bugs compared with the sleek, graceful planes. Or maybe they look like military transports—like the amphibious vehicles I’ve seen in the World War II movies Mr. Lang switches to when he gets tired of nature shows. The shuttles look like they could have landed on Omaha Beach on D-day.

  Maybe if my father hadn’t been injured, he would have stayed in the marines for good. Maybe I would have grown up playing on vehicles like this, able to recite details about them the way Grandpa can with tractors built between the 1930s and the 1980s. Maybe my father would have been stationed all over the world, and I would be as used to traveling the globe as Avery is.

  I bet I’d be good at running through airports then.

  The shuttle docks at the opposite terminal with a thud. The door opens, and Avery jumps out, first in line.

  “Okay, you run ahead of Kayla and me,” Mr. Armisted tells her, as he glances at his watch. “Tell the gate agent we’re right behind you. Got it? Right behind you.”

  “Got it,” Avery says, and dashes off.

  I need to go to the bathroom. I’m kind of hungry, too. My muscles ache from running through the last terminal, and my sweaty jeans chafe against my legs. They hurt. But I force myself to run alongside Mr. Armisted, dodging strollers and rolling suitcases and people who seem to be talking to themselves—no, they’re talking into phones linked to headsets. It all goes by in a blur.

  “I don’t like running either,” Mr. Armisted gasps. “But—”

  “I know! I know!” I snap. “I’m trying to go fast!”

  I don’t feel hungry anymore. I feel more like throwing up. Can running do that—make someone throw up?

  That would be really embarrassing.

  I try to leap over someone’s leg, stuck out from the seat he’s sprawled in, but I misjudge the distance and kick the guy instead. He’s kind of cute, college-aged maybe, with a beard.

  “I’m sorry! I’m sorry!” I gasp, and keep struggling to run.

  I don’t belong here. I’m not suited for this. Maybe I would have been, if my dad hadn’t been injured and I’d grown up differently, but that didn’t happen. I’m suited for nothing more extravagant than going to McDonald’s with Grandma and Grandpa. I’m suited for sitting around watching nature shows with Mr. Lang and soap operas with Mrs. Lang. I’m suited for putting up with the cabbage smell of the nursing home.

  I’m suited for Crawfordsville. Poor, run-down, beat-up Crawfordsville. And I want to go back.

  I keep running anyway, through this glitzy airport, where—I just saw this on a sign—even a bottle of plain water costs four dollars.

  “Almost there,” Mr. Armisted pants beside me. “Three more gates . . . Can you see? Is the door at gate D4 open or shut?”

  “Shut?” I say. I keep running, because I’m not sure I’m looking at the right door.

  “But so many people are still standing around,” Mr. Armisted murmurs. He keeps running too, even as he wipes sweat from his forehead.

  Avery appears before us.

  “You can stop running,” she says flatly, as if she’s mad.

  “Because it’s too late?” Mr. Armisted asks. “Or because . . . they’re holding the plane for us?”

  “No,” Avery says disgustedly. “Because they just canceled our flight.”

  Avery, Annoyed

  “These things happen,” Dad says, sneaking a glance at Kayla. It’s like he’s more worried that she’s going to be upset over the canceled flight, than that I am.

  Kayla looks like the Sweat Queen of the Universe. Her face is red, and she gulps in air like there’s not enough of it around. She tugs at her jeans, as if that’s going to make them cooler. Didn’t anybody tell her it’s crazy to wear such tight jeans for a long flight?

  Oh, guess not, I think, almost guiltily. Because Dad wouldn’t have known. About the most dressed-down he ever gets is khakis. Anyway, male clothes are always looser. Guys don’t ever have to deal with feeling like their legs are surrounded by concrete. Or sausage casings.

  “They’ll put us on another flight, right?” I ask Dad.

  He’s already on his phone, calling his company’s travel agent. He tilts the phone to the side, and says, “They’re checking. It’ll probably be tomorrow.”

  “Tomorrow!” I explode.

  Dad’s eyes dart from me to Kayla.

  “Why don’t you two sit down while I work this out?” Dad asks.

  She does kind of look like she might fall over. But it’s not going to make us friends, to have us sit together.

  “Kayla can sit,” I say. “I’m going to go buy another water bottle. Either of you want one?”

  “Um, no, thanks,” Kayla says, in a small voice. Or a voice that’s trying to be small. It’s like she’s an ant cowering because she doesn’t want to be stepped on. “Isn’t there a drinking fountain somewhere?”

  “Get water bottles for all three of us,” Dad commands me. Then he moves the phone back toward his mouth and says into it, “Well, if that’s the only choice . . .”

/>   Maybe it’s the bad airport lighting, but the lines in his forehead seem deeper than usual. A few gray hairs curl over his ears and at his temples. I don’t remember how long ago Dad started dyeing his hair to cover the gray—maybe it’s been my whole life. Mom and Dad both were kind of old when I was born. But they still try to look young. Mom says professional people have to do that. So usually, Dad—or maybe Mom—is religious about scheduling his hair appointments, so no gray ever shows.

  These things happen. . . . That’s the only choice. . . .

  Has my real dad been taken away and replaced by some pod-person wimpy pathetic guy?

  Normally, my dad can conjure up solutions out of nowhere. That time we had to run through the airport on the Aruba trip? He also managed to sweet-talk the gate agent into letting us on after the door was closed. So, yeah. That’s how he operates. Mr. Charm and his golden smile can accomplish anything. I was kind of expecting him to say, Okay, now we have a private jet taking us to Madrid. Don’t worry about water bottles; forget those awful sandwiches we bought back in Columbus. We’ll have Perrier and gourmet meals on this plane.

  I walk over to a little Au Bon Pain food stand for the water.

  These things happen. . . .

  Dad used those exact same words back at the Columbus airport when I asked why his credit card wouldn’t work. But then he tried way too hard to make me understand how credit card companies sometimes overreact with security measures—which, duh, I already knew, because Lauren’s mom works for Chase, and Lauren always acts like she herself is the expert on identity theft.

  And then he walked over to the opposite side of the hallway to call the credit card company and complain. And I could see how his shoulders slumped before he even put the phone to his ear.

  Something is going on. Something I really don’t understand.

  Kayla, Excited

  I don’t just get to see Spain. I get to see Washington, DC!

  If I were, say, Stephanie Purley, I’d jump up and down and do splits in the air and squeal, Yes! Yes! Yes! And then maybe I’d make that spinning motion cheerleaders do with their arms, and cry, Bonus! Bonus!