Give and Take

by Elly Swartz

  I close my locker before she can see any more. “Oh, that stuff is for an assignment in art class.”

  Ava comes over. “What smells?”

  I shrug and head to English.

  Ms. López is standing by her messy Mom-wouldn’t-approve desk in room 404. Just above her chair hangs a sign that says SO MANY THINGS ARE POSSIBLE JUST AS LONG AS YOU DON’T KNOW THEY’RE IMPOSSIBLE.—THE PHANTOM TOLLBOOTH BY NORTON JUSTER

  Ms. López is a big believer in the power of positive thinking. That’s what she told us on the first day of seventh grade. Some days, I believe her. Today I’m not sure.

  She moves to the front of the class, two fingers in the air. We’re supposed to stop talking. It almost works, except for Lysander, who’s bragging about the goals he scored during yesterday’s soccer game against the Falcons.

  Ms. López waits until he stops talking long enough for her to assign partners for our poetry-unit project. Mason is mine. When I look over, he nods, his dark hair hanging in front of his eyes. Then Ms. López writes the assignment on the board: Beyond Poetry: How and why people use poetic language in the world.

  Keisha’s hand shoots in the air. “What’s ‘poetic language’?”

  Ms. López moves to the front of the class. “Good question. Similes, metaphors, hyperboles, alliterations, puns, and personifications are all part of the poetic language. I want you and your partner to search songs, ads, newspapers, menus, the internet—anywhere in your regular life—to find examples.”

  She fills the big table at the front of our classroom with all sorts of that stuff, then gives us the next twenty minutes to begin looking. “This is just the start. The project will continue for the next few weeks.”

  “What do you want to look through first?” I ask Mason.

  He shrugs and stuffs his hands in his pockets. He’s wearing a Patriots championship T-shirt. I have the same one at home.

  “Let’s check out the newspaper,” I say.

  Mason grabs a copy of the Boston Globe from the table. When he opens it up, I see an ad for Becker’s All-Natural Baby Formula, and my mind shifts to Izzie and my box. My stomach swirls, hoping Mom has kept her promise. That she hasn’t found my stuff. Touched my stuff. Cleaned my stuff. My breath tightens.

  Then I hear Mason’s voice. “Oh, here’s a pun in an ad for Freddie’s Car Repair. It says, ‘We will shock and exhaust you.’”

  “Good one,” I say, squeezing a smile out while Mason writes our pun on the sheet Ms. López gave us.

  I scour the rest of the paper, hoping to squash my worry with poetic language. Then I turn to Mason. “Hey, sorry about Saturday.”

  “It’s okay. One time, I shot a 5/25. An hour later, I was at the hospital having an appendicitis.”

  “Actually, I wasn’t talking about my score. Although I did have one of my worst days ever. I was talking about your dad.”

  “Oh, that,” he says, flipping to the sports section.

  “Maybe if I don’t stink next practice, your dad will be happier. You know, he’ll see that we’re a really strong team.”

  “Doubt it.”

  “Why?” I dig in my pocket and hand Mason one of the two mints I grabbed when we left Sam’s Seafood Alley the last time I went there. It was just after Charlie announced that a cockroach can live for nine days without its head. “Don’t you think your dad will feel better about the new squad if he sees we’re good?”

  “Not likely. He hates everything about trap. And being on an all-girl squad makes it worse.”

  “Obviously, we’re not an all-girl anything anymore. Belle was cut to make room for you. Remember?” I unwrap the other green-and-white-striped candy and pop it into my mouth.

  “Whatever.”

  “It’s not a whatever thing. It’s a huge thing.”

  He doesn’t say anything.

  “What does your mom think?” I ask, flipping the mint in circles with my tongue.

  He looks at me. Unease wedges between us. “Just don’t tell your friends what happened the other day in the parking lot with my dad.”

  I’m quiet.

  “Okay?” he asks.

  I nod. Then I catch a glimpse of a sketch pad sticking out of his backpack. The cover’s ripped off, and the page is filled with amazing cartoonlike drawings.

  “Those are really cool.” I point to his bag.

  He shoves his pad farther into his backpack, zips it closed, hands me the half-filled-in sheet, and walks back to his desk.

  * * *

  I’m eating my burger with extra pickles when Ava squeezes in next to me with her lunch tray. “Well, how are your magical powers today? Turned Izzie into a frog or a lizard?”

  “Why a frog or a lizard?”

  “Really? That’s what you’re focused on?” Ava says. “Not the part where you have the power to magically transform your foster sister into a reptile?” She laughs.

  I lean my head on my best friend’s shoulder. “She’s my sister for only a few more days. Then she’s my”—I don’t know what to say—“nothing. I guess.”

  “Maybe you can harness your magical powers and change that. Again.” She smiles and takes a bite of her peanut-butter-and-marshmallow-fluff sandwich.

  “If I had powers, I’d get my parents to keep her.” And my mom to stay out of my stuff. I keep that wish to myself and the universe.

  “If I had powers, I’d be a famous coder,” Ava says, “and I wouldn’t have to share a bathroom with my brothers who leave the toilet seat up.”

  “If I had powers, I’d want my sister not to be great at every single thing she does,” Sam says, joining us and dunking her fries into ketchup.

  As Ava and Sam continue talking about magic, I guzzle the last of my milk and slide the empty container into my backpack.

  “What are you doing with that?” Ava wants to know.

  “With what?” Sam asks.

  Ava points to the empty milk carton. “That garbage. Why are you saving it?”

  All eyes stare at me. My secret feels like it might spill out and stick to the table like old ketchup.

  But then I laugh, like of course I’m not saving trash. “It’s for Charlie, for this project he wants us to do together.” I hold my breath and hope that sounds like a thing I would do.

  “Oh. Want mine, too?” Ava asks. She finishes her milk and hands me her empty carton.

  “Thanks,” I say.

  When I look up, Mason’s staring at me from across the cafeteria.

  Slowly, I zip the milk cartons into my bag.

  21

  The Girl with the Sparkly Headband

  When I get home, I step over Charlie’s Lego castle and head to my room. Thankfully, it looks like Mom hasn’t been back in here since our run-in this morning. My bed and floor and desk are still littered with stuff. I move the Guinness World Records book that Charlie and I checked out from the library and dig out a box from underneath my bed. I survey my memories and drop in the milk cartons from lunch. I sit with my stuff for a while. Wrapped in a kind of peacefulness. Then I clean my room enough so Mom doesn’t come in and do it with me.

  Or for me.

  That’s when I hear crying. First, I think it’s Izzie, but then realize it’s Charlie. When I open the door to my bedroom, Charlie’s sitting just outside. His eyes are red, his cheeks are wet, and there’s a trail of snot running from his nose.

  I hand him a tissue. “What’s wrong, Bear?”

  “Emma Rose. She wouldn’t let me play four square again. I told her I was a fast learner, just like you said, but it didn’t work.” He ignores the tissue and uses his sleeve instead.

  I hold my little brother’s hand. “I have an idea.”

  His big, round eyes look in mine.

  “Do you trust me?” I ask.

  He nods.

  “Okay. Let’s do this.”

  I tell Mom the plan, recruit Dillon, grab chalk and a red rubber ball, and we walk with Charlie back to the school playground. The three of us. The sun�
��s shining bright, so it’s packed with kids. To the left is a pickup basketball game. Dillon glances over at me.

  “Later,” I say. “Now we need you to help make a new four-square champion.”

  I look at Charlie. When he smiles, I can see the hole from the tooth he lost last week. He bit into a crunchy McIntosh, and his tooth stuck. Right to the core of the apple.

  We pass kids laughing on the tire swing, climbing the monkey bars, and jumping off the swings. But Charlie’s smile disappears as we get to the edge of the blacktop. Three girls are huddled together talking, and just behind them is a line of kids waiting to play four square. Emma Rose is serving. As we get closer to the bouncing ball, Charlie tugs my shirt. “Let’s come back later. When it’s empty.”

  “You’ve got this,” I whisper to my little brother. “I promise. We’re right here with you.” His mouth twists in a way that says he’s not totally convinced.

  Emma Rose pushes back her sparkly headband and holds the ball. She glances over and puts her hands on her hips. Instead of getting in line to play that game, Dillon draws a new four-square box. Then he hands Charlie the ball. Charlie looks at me, and I nod. He says in the smallest of whispers, “Anyone want to play?”

  I step into one square. Dillon steps in another.

  No one else moves.

  Charlie bites his lip, which is now in full quiver mode.

  Okay, Universe, help my little brother out. He just needs one kid. One kid to say yes.

  Emma Rose serves, and the boy in the box misses. Emma Rose makes a not-so-nice face.

  Another boy moves out of line and steps into the last empty box of Charlie’s four squares.

  Thank you, Universe.

  “Hi, I’m Charlie.” He hands the boy the ball. “You can serve.”

  The boy smiles. “Thanks. My name’s Aarush.”

  Dillon gets out first. Then me. And with each out, another kid slides into Charlie’s game. Where no one is making a not-so-nice face.

  Soon, only Emma Rose is standing in her four squares.

  Charlie looks at me and then at Emma Rose.

  “Want to play?” he asks the girl wearing the sparkly headband.

  She nods and steps into one of Charlie’s four squares.

  22

  Not Garbage!

  It’s been five days since Hurricane Berma hit Louisiana. Ms. López is organizing a book drive to send new and gently loved books to the schools that flooded. Dad’s rebroadcasting our How to Find Your Pet After a Natural Disaster episode. And the adoptive couple is working on the fastest way to get out of Louisiana. Mom said a levee broke, there are major power outages, lots of road closures, and the airport is running only humanitarian efforts. Which means no flights out for Maya and Asher.

  With each day Izzie stays with us, I love her more. That’s the second weird thing I’ve learned about love. The first is that it smells like powder. The second is that it grows. Even if you don’t water it. Which is different from everything in Nana’s garden.

  “Can I come in?” It’s Mom.

  She sits next to me on my bed before I can answer. Then she reaches for my hand. “We need to talk.”

  “I put lots of my stuff away,” I say, looking around at my mostly neater room.

  She nods. “Thank you.”

  I let go of her hand and slide down under my daisy-yellow comforter. “Was there another hurricane?” I cross my fingers and silently tell the universe there can’t be any more horrible storms.

  “No hurricane,” she says.

  I uncross my fingers.

  “When I took Izzie on a walk today, I couldn’t find her yellow sock or her frog binkie.” She sighs. “I looked all over the house. Finally, I found them both under your bed. On the floor.” I scoot farther away from my mom, no longer wondering where Charlie gets his best-finder gene.

  A tornadolike anger spins through my body. “You agreed not to go into my stuff!” I get out of my bed. “And they weren’t on the floor. They were in a box!” A burning hot spreads across my face and chest.

  Her voice is calm. “Maybe they were in a box, but today they were on the floor. With—”

  “They were not on the floor! They were in one of my private you-can’t-touch boxes!” My lungs feel like they’re squeezing all the air out of me.

  “Maggie, I wasn’t trying to invade your space. I was looking for Isabelle’s things. Nothing more.”

  “You had no right going into my stuff!” I yell from my angry place.

  I flip up my comforter and look under my bed. There’s Izzie’s sock, a sliver of diaper tape, strands of baby hair, two napkins, five gum wrappers, the gecko necklace, the tassel from Nana’s scarf, the milk cartons, the binkie, the button, the rocks, the blanket threads, the butterscotch candy wrappers, the photos, and the three bendy straws. Some of these things are in my boxes. Some are on the floor. I don’t remember anything being on the floor.

  “What did you do?” I ask my mother. The words dart out, sharp and accusing.

  “Nothing. This was how I found your things. Spilled like garbage.”

  “They’re not garbage!”

  “Of course they’re garbage! There are empty milk cartons with ants in them.” She picks up a carton with a line of ants marching along the rim.

  “You don’t understand! You don’t get it! You don’t get me,” I scream as anger rips through my body.

  In that moment, I’m thankful no one else is home to hear my voice bounce off the walls. “Did you take anything?”

  She shakes her head no, her brown curls moving with her. But I don’t believe her. I pull out my boxes from under my bed and survey my stuff. Then I move to the closet and do the same thing. When I’m done, I’m sitting in a sea of cardboard. I exhale. An ant crawls over my foot.

  She tries again. “Honey, what is all this stuff? Why do you have pieces of random things dumped all over the floor? Why are you keeping empty containers and old clothes and trash?” She moves toward me.

  Don’t.

  “It’s not trash! It’s my stuff. I need it.”

  She points to the ants on my floor.

  Were they here before?

  Then she picks up the used yellow plastic fork and the half of a red, white, and blue plate with fireworks on it from our family’s Fourth of July picnic last year. “What could you possibly need these for?” Her arms stretch out to her sides, her worried eyebrows letting me know she doesn’t understand.

  “To remember.” My voice is so low it’s even hard for me to hear.

  “And this?” She’s holding an empty gum wrapper from our first trap practice as an all-girl squad.

  “Let go of my stuff!” I yell.

  “Don’t raise your voice to me, Maggie. We’ve talked about that. I’m trying to figure out what’s going on.” She drops the wrapper.

  “I keep it to remember.” How doesn’t she get that? I grab my wrapper and tuck it into the top of one of the boxes.

  “Remember what?” Her arms fall to her sides. Concern and confusion worm into the wrinkles around her eyes.

  “Trap practice, my great presentation on Punnett squares, the day with Gramps at Box Mart, the hikes up Ridge Mountain, the lunches with my friends, Izzie, Nana.”

  Everything freezes when I mention Nana. I see the pain flash in Mom’s eyes. I know it. I feel it. It’s the pain I get every time I think I’m going to forget.

  Something.

  Everything.

  “You don’t need these things to remember,” Mom says.

  “Yes, I do!”

  “No, you don’t. This is garbage and threads and pieces of random things.”

  I shake my head. Back and forth and back and forth and back and forth. There are no words for how wrong she is.

  But she doesn’t stop. In a gentle voice, she says, “Memories stay with you. In your heart.”

  “Then why do you keep Nana’s charm bracelet?” I ask in a not-so-gentle voice. Ever since Nana died, Mom’s had that gold chai
n wrapped around her wrist.

  “That’s different.”

  “No, it’s not. You wear that bracelet so you don’t forget Nana the way she forgot you.”

  She rests her hand over the heart charm. “Maggie.” Another step toward me. “I wear this bracelet to feel close to Nana, not because I’m worried I’ll forget her. I could never forget her. That’s how love works. And the only reason Nana forgot anything was because she had dementia. I don’t have that, and neither do you.”

  I stop listening, slam close the lids of my boxes, and stand in front of them. “There’s no garbage in here. And we’re not touching or cleaning or throwing out anything!” My voice gets louder with every syllable. “So leave my stuff alone! And get out of my room!”

  “Maggie, let’s talk.”

  “You don’t understand!” I’m screaming. Again.

  “We need to clean out these boxes and the stuff under your bed. Get rid of the ants and the garbage,” she says. “We can do it together.”

  “No! I hate you! You’re the worst mom ever!” The words crash and anchor between us. “I won’t let you take away my sister and my memories!”

  Then it happens.

  The anger drapes across my brain and digs like nails into my heart. I take the plate, plastic fork, shirt, perfume bottle, bath mat, and throw them at my mother, one by one.

  23

  Drift and Drain

  Mom puts her hands in front of her face and, in a very loud voice, says, “Don’t!” as she storms out of my room. I know she’s gone. Not for good. But for now. Space. That’s her thing. She needs it. “Never talk from the place where anger lives.” That’s what she always says. “You have to give those feelings room to drift and drain.”

  I drag my daisy-yellow comforter and my double stack of pillows onto the floor in front of my bedroom door, like the Queen’s Guard in front of Buckingham Palace. No one’s coming in my room, plucking my things, and tossing them into the garbage. No one!

  They are not trash.

  They are not junk.