Falling Over Sideways

by Jordan Sonnenblick

  That was when I finally broke down.

  Mrs. Jones gave the sixth graders some warm-up scales, took me into her office, and hugged me. “Oh, kitten, are you having a bad day?” she asked.

  No, I thought, I’m having an early freaking Christmas. See the tinsel on my teeth?

  “You know, Claire, it’s perfectly normal if you’re depressed after what’s been happening with your father and everything. Would you like me to call over to the guidance office and see whether the eighth-grade counselor is free?”

  I forced myself to breathe deeply, and then said, “I’m not depressed. I’m just mad.”

  “Really? Why? You’re usually so even-tempered.”

  Even-tempered? I thought. How little you know me. But of course I didn’t say that. Instead, I mumbled, “Some people were making fun of my braces. I know, it’s stupid.”

  “Honey,” she said, “listen. When I was in eighth grade, my parents got divorced. For months, I felt like I was walking around on spiderwebs, like the slightest wrong step would make everything fall apart. And then one day in math class, a girl made fun of my jeans and I completely lost it.”

  Well, this was intriguing. “You lost it? What did you do?”

  “I jumped up out of my seat, slapped her across the face in both directions, and then pushed my desk into the back of her chair so hard that she fell on the floor.”

  I couldn’t help it. I laughed. “You … did that?” I gasped.

  She smiled. “Yes, I did. And can I tell you a secret?”

  I nodded.

  “It felt … excellent.”

  Right after she said this, Mrs. Jones seemed to suddenly remember she was a teacher, because she added, “But pretend you didn’t hear that, all right? The important thing is that I know what it feels like when things aren’t going right at home. And I’m here for you.”

  “Thank you,” I said, and meant it. The mental picture of Mrs. Jones smacking the heck out of some 1980s mean girl had totally cheered me up. “And I’m not depressed. I promise. They’re only braces, right?”

  “Right,” Mrs. Jones said.

  When I got home from school, Mom and Matthew were both helping Dad come out of the bathroom and walk up the stairs to the kitchen table. I smiled hugely at them, hoping they would notice my braces and say something nice, but they barely looked away from what they were doing. I sat there and watched Dad use one of his new, fat-handled spoons to eat some applesauce from one of his new bowls that attached to his new plastic table mat with suction cups, while Matthew made fake-cheerful small talk about his school day, and Mom worked on getting dinner into the oven.

  And I smiled.

  And smiled.

  Matthew barely looked at me until Dad said, “Shiny Piggy!”

  Both Matthew and Mom stopped and stared. Mom said, “Oh, Claire, I’d totally forgotten you were getting braces today! You look so cute!”

  “Uh, yeah, Claire,” Matthew said. “Those look nice on you.”

  Instead of making me feel good, this made me furious. “Mom,” I snarled, “you knew I was getting my braces on today?”

  “Well, sure, it’s been on the calendar for a while.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “I assumed you knew, Claire. And, well, we’ve all been kind of busy here.”

  “But I brought all the wrong stuff for lunch. I couldn’t eat any of it. All I’ve had to eat all day is half a cracker. And everybody hated my braces! They laughed at me! This was the worst day of my life!”

  “This was the worst day of your life, Claire?”

  I said, “Yes. It was.”

  “Really? After everything we’ve been through over the past month and a half? I want you to think really hard before you answer.”

  I looked around at my mom, who looked like she wanted to strangle me; at my brother, who looked kind of horrified; and finally at my father, who just sat there with applesauce dribbling down his chin, looking confused. Then I stood and went upstairs to my room.

  I felt like I had just been Cabrillo’d, Captain Cooked, and then Henry Hudsoned. Actually, no. Henry Hudson had had a few faithful crew members in his little boat. I was sinking slowly in mine, all alone.

  For the longest time, I didn’t tell anybody in my dance world about Dad’s stroke. I wasn’t even sure how kids at school had found out so fast, but dance was my safe place, and I did not want to talk about brain injuries, blood clots, canes, walkers, or anything else there.

  I managed to get away with it until a break between classes one night, when Katherine suddenly asked me, “What’s your dad working on now?” The problem with having a father who writes books for teens is that everybody I know has read his work in school. It’s the most bizarre thing ever. I remember when it first started happening to Matthew’s friends. Kids who had known our father as a car-pool dad since preschool suddenly got all shy and giggly around him for, like, a week or two, and then got over it. I thought it was hilarious at the time … but it was much less amusing when it was my friends going through the weird phase.

  Girls would come up to me at dance and be like, “I’m studying your dad. I had to read his website bio in class today. Did you know he dedicated his first novel to his son, Matthew, and his daughter, Claire?”

  And I’d just be standing there, like, If I had to stalk your parents for homework, do you think I’d march up to you and tell you about it?

  The one thing that every single person in the world seems to know about authors is that you’re supposed to ask what they’re working on. I don’t know why. Katherine’s dad is a surgeon, and I don’t go up to her and ask if he’s sliced up any interesting intestines lately.

  Still, there she was in front of me, waiting for an answer. And what was I supposed to say—He’s working on identifying his family members? His meatball-splatter imagery is looking like a real artistic breakthrough? His newest project is bladder control?

  I just said, “Umm … he’s kind of between books right now.” Which was true, due to his inability to utilize the English language.

  Katherine said, “Your dad is so nice. Remember when we first met at play rehearsal?”

  Of course I did. It had been during fifth grade, at a community theater production of Annie. My father had been one of the volunteer scenery painters.

  “And your father told you to crawl under the big desk of the orphanage right before dress rehearsal, and then look up? So you did, and he had painted Claire rules! on the bottom of the desk drawer? That was awesome.”

  I nodded. I had actually forgotten about that part.

  “And this year, he’s going to be onstage with you!”

  I must have been staring at her as if she had two noses or something, because she added, “You know—for the father-daughter dance?”

  My lips felt like they were made of lead as I said, “Yeah … right. Of course. I can’t wait.”

  Alanna appeared then, sipping bottled water and smiling hugely. “The father-daughter dance. How amazing is that going to be? My dad is already getting nervous. Every week he’s like, ‘Do you know the theme yet? Is there music yet? Should we be practicing?’ And I’m like, ‘You’re a dork!’ But it’s cute. Kind of. Oh, by the way—are your parents coming to the Halloween party this year?”

  Oh, this is simply craptastic, I thought. Alanna’s parents always threw a big Halloween party, and then Katherine, Alanna, and I would go over to Katherine’s house for a sleepover. My mom made it to the party every year, and my father had probably gone to a couple of them.

  If Mom didn’t go to the party, she would mention Dad’s stroke to Alanna’s mom on the phone when she RSVP’d. And if Mom did go, she would tell everyone about the stroke during the party. If she somehow managed to haul Dad there—well, that was just too preposterous to contemplate.

  Everybody at dance would stop thinking my father was awesome, and start knowing he was a broken shadow of his former self.

  “Uh, I’m not sure. Can I get
back to you on that?”

  “No problem. Hey, Katherine, let’s get back in the studio. I want to work on my fouettés before class starts up again. I need to be able to land four in a row cleanly. See you later, Claire.”

  Four fouettés? Nobody in my classes except me could even do one. A fouetté is the fast, spinning turn that dance schools always have the girls do together in performance in order to make the audience clap like crazy, but nobody ever claps until at least the third rotation. Which meant that there would be no spontaneous outbreaks of applause during any of my recital dances. Some of the girls in my group had about as much chance of landing a fouetté as my dad did.

  The teachers would be better off just choreographing a triple Cabrillo. The injury rate would probably be roughly the same.

  I evaded Alanna’s questions about the party until the week before Halloween, when I couldn’t get out of dealing with the issue anymore. Then I had an idea: I would ask Matthew what he’d been telling his friends about our father.

  He was sitting at the kitchen table doing homework, but I noticed he kept peeking past me at Dad, who was watching TV downstairs.

  “You’re kidding, right?” Matthew asked.

  “No. Why would I be kidding?”

  “Are you really that oblivious, Claire?” he said. I had never heard him sound so bitter before. I mean, he was a big brother, so of course he knew how to put me down. But not like this.

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Well, Claire Bear, my soccer team figured out there was something going on when I quit playing in the middle of the season so I could rush home every day to spend time with your father while your mother makes his dinner. My band friends noticed when I quit being section leader. My girlfriend noticed when I broke up with her so I would be here all night, every night, and all weekend. And I’m pretty sure everyone else got the memo when I stopped getting straight A-pluses for the first time in my life and dropped two of my AP classes. Does that answer your question?”

  I sat down across from Matthew. It felt like someone had cut the tendons behind my knees. He was right. I was the most clueless person in the world. How had I not noticed that he was home around the clock? Sports were his life—I would have to have been the biggest moron in the world not to notice when he stopped going to soccer in the middle of the season.

  Correction: I was the biggest moron in the world.

  And to think, I had been furious at him when he hadn’t noticed my braces.

  “Matthew, I—”

  “I don’t want to hear it. But tell your friends. First of all, you need them, and second of all, they have to have noticed something. It’s not like you’re exactly subtle about your emotions, Claire.”

  “What are you talking about? I—”

  He held up one hand, palm facing me. “Don’t even.”

  I turned and started to walk away. Then Matthew said, “There’s another thing, Claire. You have to spend some time with Dad.”

  “I—”

  “Whatever you’re going to say, I don’t want to hear it. He has to be missing you. You know you’ve always been his favorite, right?”

  “Me? You’re the perfect one. You get the perfect grades, you have the perfect behavior, you’re the one who’s always the leader of every activity in the world, you win every trophy—how could I possibly be Dad’s favorite? You’re the one whose name he remembered, not me!”

  Matthew chuckled. Like, in my face. Then he said, “Don’t you get it? He calls me Matthew and you Piggy, right? That’s because he never made up a nickname for me. I’m not trying to be a tool about this or anything, but—God! You don’t even know what you have.”

  “Had.”

  “Have. He’s not dead. He’s right there.”

  “Yeah, but—you don’t understand.”

  “Really? That’s what you’re going with?”

  “Well, it’s true. You don’t.”

  “What don’t I understand? I understand what it’s like to have a dad who’s had a stroke. I understand what it’s like for my whole life to fall apart in a day. I understand what it means to give up everything I want to do for myself, just to be there for my parents. So where’s the part I’m missing?”

  “You don’t—never mind.”

  “What?”

  “Forget it.”

  “I can’t just forget it. You said it. Now tell me.”

  “You don’t know what it was like, Matthew. Being here. Watching it happen. Seeing the look on his face when he first realized what was happening. And I was so scared. Plus … ”

  “Plus what?”

  “Plus, it was my fault!”

  “What are you talking about, Claire?”

  “The night before, I was having a stupid fight with Dad. And I said … I said, ‘Maybe you need to struggle some more!’ ”

  Matthew sighed. “Wow.”

  “Wow, what?” I asked.

  “That’s pretty bad. No wonder you’ve been staying away from Dad.”

  “I haven’t been staying away from Dad!”

  Matthew looked at me and raised one eyebrow, because, well, of course I had been staying away from our father.

  “But,” Matthew said, “just because you feel guilty doesn’t mean you did this. I actually thought it was my fault for a while.”

  “Your fault? Why?”

  “I said something mean to Dad over breakfast that morning, while you were asleep.”

  “You did?”

  “Yeah. He asked if I wanted to see the new Iron Man movie together, and I said it looked stupid. I told Mom about the whole thing while Dad was in the hospital, and she said she was sure she and Dad had been obnoxious to their parents when they were teenagers, too. Then she told me that if obnoxious comments killed parents, every teenager in America would be an orphan.”

  “But I still feel so bad. I just can’t believe that was the last thing I said to him.”

  “It wasn’t. You’ve said tons of things to him since then. And you held his hand while he was having the stroke. I don’t know if I could have done that.”

  “But still … ”

  “You know what, Claire? You can either mope forever or you can get past this and help out. Listen, I have a math test tomorrow that I haven’t even started studying for yet. Why don’t you go sit next to Dad, put your hand on his arm, and tell him about your day? Even if he doesn’t understand every word, he definitely gets happier when you’re in the room. And I get happier when I don’t fail math tests.”

  I nodded, and Matthew took his school stuff up to his room.

  I walked downstairs and sat down next to my father for the first time in weeks. He looked old to me—old and skinny. He was watching some kind of game show with flashing lights and a lot of shouting.

  Before all this, I was pretty sure Dad had never watched a game show.

  My heart was skipping and hammering in my chest, and I could feel my palms starting to sweat. This was insane! I was actually scared to sit next to my own father. I did the old three-inhalation trick from play rehearsals. Next, I ran both hands through my hair and tightened the hair tie that was holding it back away from my face. Finally, I took the remote control out of his hand, which was easy because his fingers were limp, and muted the sound on the TV.

  “Hey, Daddy,” I said, “the weirdest things have been going on in my life lately. Have you ever heard of Juan Cabrillo?”

  Just as I was starting to get used to the indignity of being fifth chair in band, which involved looking past another eighth grader and two seventh graders every time Ryder spoke to me in rehearsals, Mrs. Jones announced that we would be having auditions for jazz band right after Christmas vacation. This was bad, bad news, because there were only four altos in the jazz band.

  Or, as Ryder so sweetly put it, “Do you know where the fifth-chair alto sits during jazz band performances? In your house!” Apparently, his post-stroke “Leave Claire Alone Period” was over.

  I didn’t know wha
t to do. Now that I was trying to spend at least an hour or two a day with Dad so that Matthew could do more of his schoolwork, I didn’t have time to practice. Plus, who was I kidding? I hadn’t practiced since before the stroke anyway.

  One day in the middle of science, Ryder started teasing me about how I wasn’t going to make jazz band. I was actually in a group with him and Regina, which was entirely my fault. Mrs. Selinsky liked to change up the groups extremely often, and I had asked not to be put in a group with Jennifer or Desi because I was still mad at them from the braces incident. Jennifer had done this too many times before—she was very good at saying something mean, getting other girls to join in, and then afterward saying she hadn’t meant anything by it.

  Anyway, Roshni had stayed with Jennifer and Desi, so I was basically just a random, unwanted leftover when Mrs. Selinsky made up the new groups. Regina and Ryder were always stuck together like glue, and my super-excellent-luck powers planted me at a table with them. I was literally holding my breath as Mrs. Selinsky assigned the last few people, who were also all kind of random. It finally got down to just one kid: Christopher Marsh. I felt so sorry for him standing there. I mean, it wasn’t his fault that he didn’t understand how to talk to people. I had always tried to be nice to him in elementary school, but it was hard because he only knew how to discuss, like, three things.

  The conversations would be like, “Hi, Christopher. How are you?”

  “I am playing with glue. I enjoy playing with glue. I like to dry it partially and then roll it into balls.”

  “That’s … nice. What did you pack for lunch? I have a yogurt.”

  “Yogurt is a bit like glue. Both are viscous, liquid suspensions.”

  “Um, okay.”

  “Also, glue is edible. I like it best when it is not quite dry.”

  What do you even say to that? I was like, “Want some gum?”

  He said, “No, thank you. I have glue.”

  Anyway, Christopher was standing by the classroom door, just waiting to get assigned. I looked around, and every other group already had four kids in it. I thought, Okay, Christopher’s not so bad. He isn’t mean to me, like Regina and Ryder, and he’s great at anything that involves math. I can live with this.