Pavi Sharma's Guide to Going Home

by Bridget Farr

  “Think of a plan, I guess.” I lean my head against the scratchy fabric-covered seat. “I’ll stop by Crossroads tomorrow to make sure it worked.…”

  “What if it doesn’t?”

  “Don’t worry about that until it happens. I’ll check on her tomorrow to make sure everything turned out okay. Then we can make a new plan. A bigger plan. The final plan.”

  Hamilton leans back beside me, his shoulder pressed against mine.

  “Our plan didn’t work last time.”

  I shake my head. “This isn’t the same type of plan. This one isn’t to get her a new home. It’s just to keep her out of the bad one for a couple more days.”

  “I’m starting to think my greatest accomplishment of seventh grade is going to be lying more times in one year than I have in my whole life.” Hamilton rubs the dark black edges of his eyes, smearing the makeup toward his temples.

  “Don’t look at it that way. You’re telling a good lie. And you did a great job with Meridee. You’re a good teacher. Maybe your biggest accomplishment this year will be saving someone’s life.”

  “As long as they don’t take out her appendix.”

  “As long as she stops playing Ouch.”

  “Ouch in the car. Never, ever at the hospital.”

  We both groan, folding our arms over our stomachs and the appendixes safe inside them.

  My cheek is cool against the desk in Marjorie’s office, and I close my eyes, hoping my pounding headache will go away. I could go downstairs and have Marjorie make me a cup of tea with too much honey, give me a cool towel for my forehead, but I know it won’t help. I’m not sick. I feel awful about telling Meridee she might live with her mom again. I don’t know if her mom will ever come back. Some do. A lot don’t.

  I stare down at the assignment I’m supposed to be writing for Mr. Ramirez, an essay about farming techniques in early Texas. Marjorie gave me extra computer time tonight, and normally I would race to finish it so I could use the computer to work on my business—research families, update my questionnaires—but tonight I don’t even care to get started. All my brain power is focused on Meridee, a little alarm constantly ringing: Meridee! Meridee! Meridee! I look down at the prompt again and type it into Google. I don’t bother to use the proper search terms Mr. Ramirez taught us last week and get flooded with over forty thousand responses. Who cares about farming in early Texas? Who cares about farming now?

  I open a website, starting to read the thousands of words on the page. My head throbs. I can’t do this right now.…

  Yes. I can. I go back to the search entries and scroll back several pages. I find an article on the Missouri River College website. Mr. Ramirez would hate that I’m using information from 2002 (“Too old! You guys weren’t even born yet!”), but he’d be even more upset by what I do next.

  I copy several paragraphs and paste them into a Word document. I make sure to write a topic sentence with the opening phrase Mr. Ramirez likes and swap out a few words that are too big, even for me. I add the required “Why this topic is important” conclusion, even though it isn’t important at all. I change the font and add my name at the top. I know it’s wrong, that it’s cheating, but today I don’t care. I have always done my best work in his class, so this one mistake won’t matter. I always do my best at everything, but that doesn’t change anything, doesn’t make things okay. Today, I’m going to use my energy to save Meridee.

  I hit PRINT and drop my face back to the desk.

  I’m a cheater, but maybe I’m more of a Robin Hood. Sometimes you have to do wrong to get what’s right.

  NIGHTMARES

  I haven’t had a nightmare in a long time. Years, probably. But last night, I could feel it coming before I even fell asleep. The room seemed darker when Marjorie closed the door, the blowing branches outside creating shadows on the floor, their movement a menacing dance, daring me to close my eyes and let the memories come. I tried to pull the covers tight, tucking them along the edges of my body the way I did when I was a kid, hoping that I could make myself untouchable as long as no one could pull the sheets out from around me. Each time my eyes blinked, I saw a car door opening and me stepping out onto the moonlit sidewalk, making my way behind the red-haired caseworker as we trudged up the creaking wooden stairs. I could stop my thoughts before the dream door opened, but only until I fell asleep.

  Then I heard them. The dogs.

  All night long.

  The whimpering of their cries, the flashing of their bared teeth. I can’t shake their barking from my head.

  The fluorescent cafeteria lights flicker, and I stifle a yawn, hoping I can make it through tutoring without falling asleep. It’s only one missing assignment plus a low quiz score, but our math teacher Ms. Hulsman is a real stickler about grades. I look down at the neon-yellow sticky note attached to the math quiz in my hand. “Please redo because…” I scan the five potential boxes that could be checked. I have two. One for “Lacks Mastery of Key Concept,” which should really be a “Lacks Effort,” because it’s not that I don’t know how to calculate slope, I just didn’t prioritize it over saving a life. The second is “Sloppy Handwriting,” which seems harsh because my handwriting is fine, and I was only putting dots on a map. How could I mess that up?

  Now I can’t go to Crossroads to check on Meridee. All day I’ve imagined different scenarios, trying to focus on the happy ones, which include her watching cartoons and eating cups of red Jell-O on the hospital bed. I hope Meridee’s there or back at Crossroads, nestled among her Barbie parts.

  Across the tutoring table, Hamilton stares at his identical sticky note while Piper texts on her phone. Marjorie is going to flip. Especially because of the “Sloppy Handwriting.” I hope Hamilton didn’t get one. She’s fine with “Lacks Mastery of Key Concept,” because that “just means more learning needs to be done,” but she can’t stand “Lacks Effort” or anything regarding penmanship. I think she taught Hamilton to print before he could walk.

  “We have to shoot the next installment tonight, so you better fix that quiz quickly,” Piper tells Hamilton. “How many questions did you even get wrong?”

  “Six,” Hamilton says. “But she’s going to make me redo it all.”

  “Six!” Piper cries.

  He nods. “Plus, ‘Sloppy Handwriting’ and ‘Lacks Effort.’”

  That’s worse than I expected. That level of sticky note is almost unrecoverable. “Sorry,” I say, patting his shoulder.

  He shakes his head and peels the plastic layer off the top of his snack packet, pulling out the mini Red Delicious apple. He rubs it on his sleeve like a street urchin in a novel before taking a bite.

  “How long will it take to fix?” Piper asks.

  “Not long,” Hamilton says, his eyes focused on the quiz. He bites his lower lip as he mutters corrections to himself.

  “Great, because my mom is going to be here at four fifteen to pick us up and take us to Target to get some more brushes and fishnet tights.”

  “You can’t go,” I tell Hamilton. “Ms. Hulsman already e-mailed your mom.”

  Hamilton drops his head into his hands. “Yard work.”

  “But we have to shoot tonight!” Piper cries. “Or we’ll lose momentum!”

  “Sorry, Pipe.” He turns to me. “What about… you know?”

  “I need to call and at least check on her,” I whisper to Hamilton, Piper temporarily distracted, her fingers flying as she sends a text. “Make sure they didn’t…” I make a slicing gesture at my stomach. “But there’s no way we have phone privileges until next week. I don’t think we can risk another classroom phone break-in.”

  “No way,” Hamilton says before groaning. “Stupid ‘Lacks Effort.’”

  “Stupid ‘Sloppy Handwriting.’”

  “So, you failed, too?” Piper asks before grabbing Hamilton’s bag of sunflower seeds and tearing it open with her teeth.

  “I didn’t fail. I just didn’t meet my academic potential.” Thanks, Ms. Hulsman, for
the perfect comeback.

  “Aren’t you just so proud to know Hamilton, especially now that he’s getting famous? It must be great to have such a cool family member, since your real family is… you know…” She pops a handful of sunflower seeds into her mouth.

  “My real family is what, Piper?”

  Her face blushes a cherry red. “You know, they’re just…” She hikes her shoulders up to her ears.

  “Just what? I didn’t know you met them.”

  “I just meant that you’re lucky to have such nice people to live with, since you don’t have anyone else.”

  “Good thing I only need me.”

  I turn in my seat, distracting myself with my own bag of sunflower seeds when I spot an unexpected face: Lenny. He’s chatting with the after-school monitor. I’ve never seen him outside the shelter. Did he come to tell me in person that Meridee is hurt? Did something go horribly wrong in the middle of her totally unnecessary appendectomy?

  Maybe. Or…

  He makes eye contact with me from across the room.

  He knows.

  He waves to the woman who is now helping a student fill out his club form. Lenny whistles as he walks, his muscular arms swinging back and forth.

  “Hello there, Ms. Sharma,” Lenny says, towering above me. “Staying after school?”

  “Yep. Math tutoring.”

  “Glad to see you’re keeping busy.”

  He’s so calm it’s freaking me out. Maybe it’s fine. Maybe he doesn’t suspect anything.

  “Aren’t you Pavi’s foster brother?” Lenny asks, leaning across the table to shake Hamilton’s hand. His huge hand swallows up Hamilton’s tiny one, like thunderclouds enveloping the moon. “I didn’t get to really meet you last night. You two rushed off to some… activity.”

  I gulp. Hamilton darts a frightened look at me. Be cool.

  Lenny turns his attention back to me. “Can we talk for a minute, Pav?”

  “My teacher will be here to pick us up for tutoring in a minute. It’s almost three forty-five.”

  “No problem. I’ll be quick. Let’s go sit on the benches. It’s a nice day out.”

  Outside, the breeze on my cheeks gives me a moment of hope, but Lenny’s silence makes me nervous again. He finally takes a seat on a picnic table in the center of the courtyard. He rests his hands on the scuffed tabletop.

  “Pavi.”

  I don’t say anything, but do my best to maintain eye contact. It’s his eyes that calmed me when I checked into Crossroads two years ago, when all I had was desperation and a plastic bag full of clothes. They’re the soft eyes that once allowed me to share about my mom, the same ones that reprimanded me when I stole from other kids (I did that for a while—bad habit, I know; I stopped). Those eyes oozed empathy when I talked about teachers making me write Mother’s Day cards, eyes with so much understanding, he had to have grown up in the system, too. His eyes make me want to tell the truth, they always have, but I can’t. Not this time.

  When I don’t take the bait, he continues. “Something weird happened last night with Meridee. I wanted to ask you a few questions, since I know you visited her.”

  “Yeah, sure,” I say, trying to keep the words “Is she okay?” from screaming out of my lips.

  Lenny rubs a hand against his chin.

  “Did she seem sick when you saw her yesterday? Maybe she was complaining about her stomach or her head?”

  “No,” I say, shaking my head slightly. “But I did…”

  Lenny takes a quick breath; he thinks I’m going to confess.

  “I did give her some candy. A lot of candy. Tootsie Rolls. Mini Snickers. Oh, and a lollipop. I’m really sorry. I know little kids shouldn’t have sweets, but I knew she was going to a new home and I felt bad. Did she get sick? Did she throw up? I didn’t think it was that much.…”

  “Hey, hey, calm down,” Lenny says, his eyes squinting at me like he doesn’t believe my apology. “She’s fine.…”

  Thank goodness. I’ve been waiting for him to say that.

  “But her caseworker said she acted really strange when she was in the car on the way to her placement, moaning and groaning, and it got so bad they took her to the emergency room, but once she got there she was fine.”

  She did it! Sick in the car, but not at the hospital!

  “Maybe she was nervous?” I suggest.

  “I thought so, but apparently she said, ‘Did I do a good job at Ouch? Can I see Mama now?’”

  The blood drains from my face.

  “It seems she was playing some sort of game, Ouch, and…” He turns to stare straight into me. “I was wondering what you knew about that.”

  Breathe, Pavi, I tell myself. You haven’t lost yet. You just need to think. Meridee is fine, so now save yourself. And Hamilton. A partial lie here is better than a full lie. He won’t believe me without a hint of truth.

  “Ouch is a game we played. I’d pretend to be sick and then she’d heal me with that old doctor’s cart? By the play kitchen? You know the one with the little stethoscope and the plastic hammer? It doesn’t have the mask anymore. She’s interested in science, and you know most girls drop out of STEM courses by middle school because they don’t think they’re good at math or science, so I thought this would be a great game.” I sound like Hamilton. “I’ve been playing Ouch and letting her heal me, but I never thought she’d do it for real.”

  Lenny stares at me. “Why would she think playing the game would get her to her mom?”

  “Because…” I drop my head, knowing the truth I’m about to tell will rip a hole through any trust I have with Lenny. “I told her if she did her best at Crossroads she would get to see her mom. I didn’t mean about the game!”

  “You know you can’t tell a kid that! Her being good isn’t going to get her to see her mom. Her mom is the one who needs to do right.”

  “I know, it was stupid,” I say, because I do know. I know it doesn’t matter how good your grades are, or how much the foster family likes you. You can’t bring your parents back. I know that. But now Lenny won’t trust me with the new kids anymore.

  “I forget sometimes that you’re still a kid, Pav, and you aren’t always going to say the right thing. Thankfully, they just gave her some juice, and her caseworker was able to take her to her placement.”

  “What? She didn’t go back to Crossroads?”

  “No. She wasn’t sick, so they took her to her family. I know you have bad feelings about them, but everything was fine.”

  Suddenly the sound of dogs begins to fill my brain, dragging me down, and everything starts to get heavy around the edges. My brain zooms through the images: her pink shoes stepping down onto the cracked sidewalk, the creak of the wood as she climbs the stairs, the barking of the dogs that will fill her nightmares. He has no idea what’s waiting for her there.

  “Pavi, are you okay?”

  Lenny leans toward me, and suddenly I am up and running toward the school.

  “I have to get to tutoring. I’m already late.”

  “Pavi,” Lenny yells, but I slide into the main building behind the last kid headed to tutoring. Once inside, I crouch down in the center of the stairwell, tears beginning to fall to the beat of my pounding heart.

  She’s there. We didn’t keep her out.

  AT LEAST HER ORGANS ARE SAFE

  At the sound of slow footsteps on the stairs, I hold my breath, not wanting the person to know I’m crying. I keep my head in my hands, knowing instantly it’s not a teacher, since they would have asked me already if I’m okay. I’m hoping the kid will pass, but the footsteps stop next to me and I can feel a presence hovering over me.

  “I’m not a monkey in a zoo, so move on du—” I look up to see Santos staring down at me. He has a new hoodie, a navy blue one, and his white earbuds dangle beside the white cords, the boom of heavy bass streaming from his headphones. He’s holding a folded piece of paper while he watches me.

  “What? Stop staring.” I get up from my crouche
d position and run a finger underneath my damp eyes. He watches me without a word. “You’re not going to say anything?”

  “Nothing I say is gonna make it better.”

  “You don’t even know what’s going on.”

  He shrugs. “Am I wrong?”

  No. He’s not, unless he’s about to reveal that his earbuds are really a time travel machine that can transport me to the Nickersons’ so I can pull Meridee back out the front door.

  “What are you doing here, anyway? There’s no way you’re here for tutoring.”

  He unfolds the paper in his hand and holds it toward me. It’s a permission slip for Music Production Club, hosted in the recording studio. “Foster lady wants me to do a club.”

  “Are you skipping?”

  He shoves the slip back in his pocket. “Went to the wrong room. So, you gonna tell me what’s wrong?”

  “I guess I can. I need to get to tutoring, though.”

  “We can walk.”

  As we climb the stairs, I tell him the news about Meridee.

  “At least they didn’t cut her open,” Santos says as we near Ms. Hulsman’s room, her classical music blaring through the door.

  “She might be better off without an appendix than living where she is.”

  “If it’s that bad, you gotta get her out.”

  “I know that! I wouldn’t have been crying in a stairwell if everything was going to be fine.”

  “You’re smart,” Santos says. “You’ll figure it out.”

  I take a step toward Ms. Hulsman’s door. “Wait, I almost forgot: How’s your foster mom?”

  I can’t believe I didn’t ask before now. I’m never bad at my job. I’m never bad at school. Apparently, I’m only bad at saving Meridee.

  “She’s cool. She’s Mexican, but she doesn’t speak Spanish. She’s been practicing with me. It’s weird.”

  “I get that. Marjorie and Hamilton learned a bunch of phrases in Hindi when they first met me, even though I only spoke English. My mom spoke English, too.” Ma sometimes called me beti, daughter, but mostly just Pavi-my-lovey. Sometimes other Hindi words or phrases bubble up into my head, the sounds familiar, but the meanings unclear, like having a tool I don’t know how to use. Or I’ll find myself humming a melody, but I won’t be able to remember the words. I wonder if I’ll ever want to learn more about my background. Maybe. Right now I feel like an impostor, a fake, like I’m an actor who doesn’t know their lines.