My Life in the Fish Tank

by Barbara Dee

  “You’re sending him somewhere else?” Suddenly Scarlett sprang up from the ottoman. “This is so wrong, Mom! Gabriel’s fine—he’s just being stupid and selfish, like he always is, making everyone pay attention! I don’t care about his typing, or his loudness, or his sleep habits, and I don’t want to hear this anymore!”

  She ran out of the living room. I could hear the door to our bedroom slam shut.

  “Oh boy,” Dad said.

  “She’ll be okay,” Mom said. “I’ll talk to her.” Then she pretended to smile at Aiden and me. “Okay, guys, we’ll continue this conversation another time. Right now the two of you should get ready for school in the morning.”

  “We’re going back tomorrow?” Aiden asked. “What about Scarlett?”

  “She’s going back too.”

  What about you, Mom? I wanted to ask. Aren’t you going back to school, also?

  But I already knew the answer. And right then Mom and Dad both looked exhausted, like talking about Gabriel had sucked up all their energy.

  I turned to Aiden, whose eyes were huge and round. “Well, I want to go back to school,” I announced. “I can’t wait, actually.”

  “Me too,” Aiden said, although I could tell he was just playing Follow the Leader.

  “Oh, one other thing,” Mom said as she stood. “Dad and I discussed this, and we’d like us all to try to keep this private. For Gabriel’s sake.”

  “You mean secret?” I asked.

  “Not secret, private,” Dad said. He flashed Mom a look.

  “Okay,” I said.

  But if there was a difference between those two words—“secret” and “private”—I didn’t know what it was.

  First Week of December

  It wasn’t a lie: I really was relieved to go back to school. All the things about it that used to drive me crazy—the dumb quizzes, the gossip, the way people cared what other people were wearing and who they were sitting with at lunch—were perfect distractions now. Things to fill my head. And my head had more space to fill than I’d ever realized before.

  At first they made me see the school psychologist, Dr. Godrich, a nice woman with a murmury voice and black eyeliner. Dr. Godrich kept asking how I was “doing,” how my parents were “coping,” if there was anything I wanted to “share.” “About what?” I asked, as if I had no idea what she meant. “About anything,” she replied, making her face go blank. It was kind of like the two of us were playing Chicken, and the first person to say Gabriel’s name would lose. So we just talked about homework, and what my plans were for winter break, and eventually I stopped getting called to Dr. Godrich’s office.

  Maisie and Kailani also talked about Anything But Gabriel. Maybe they thought if they kept chattering about James Ramos, Who Might Have a Crush on Kailani, they could reverse time for me, in a way. But of course that was impossible. And I knew it, even if they didn’t.

  Finally, at the end of that week, they brought up Gabriel. Not directly. Sort of sideways.

  “Are you okay, Zin?” Kailani asked. “I mean, really okay?”

  The three of us were in the cafeteria, a few feet away from everyone else. I could see worry in Kailani’s big, dark eyes.

  “Yeah,” I said. “Don’t I seem okay?”

  “Actually, you do.” She looked down at her burrito. “Maybe a little too okay.”

  I chomped on my apple. “What does that mean?”

  Kailani’s skin was brown; I couldn’t always tell when she was blushing. But this time I could. I saw her eyes lock with Maisie’s, then look down at her burrito. Again.

  “Zin,” Maisie said, slowly and carefully, as if the two of them had rehearsed this. “We just want you to know that if you ever do want to talk about your brother… I mean, you don’t have to, or anything. But if you ever did. You know we’re both totally here for you, right?”

  “Sure,” I said. Were they asking me to cry? Here, in the middle of the lunchroom, where everyone could see? I could feel my throat starting to burn. “I definitely know that. And I will. Talk to you guys, I mean.”

  “Promise?” Kailani asked in a soft voice. Finally she’d lifted her eyes to look right at me.

  “Yeah,” I said. “Promise.”

  They exchanged another look. And that was when I understood that I’d disappointed them. Like they’d been expecting me to tell them everything about Gabriel—maybe not what had happened with the car, specifically, or even how he’d gone “a little off,” but how I felt about it. How we all felt about it. But that was not something I could do, especially not right here, in front of the whole seventh grade.

  Mostly because of what Mom had said—how we needed to keep Gabriel “private.” But also because I was thinking: You could say My brother is crazy, and nobody would blink, probably. But if you said Okay, here’s the truth: my brother is mentally ill, so my parents sent him to a sort-of-hospital, who knew what would happen? I’d never heard anyone say those words, at school or anywhere else.

  And if I said all that, maybe people would start to wonder about me. One thing I was sure of: if you said that sentence—my brother is mentally ill, so my parents sent him to a sort-of-hospital—it wouldn’t end the conversation. There’d be a million questions and follow-ups: How long will he be there? Will he ever be okay? What if he goes crazy again? But it wasn’t like I had any answers. Or would be allowed to say them, even if I knew.

  Besides, the whole point of school was to let me not think about it. To let me think about other things instead—locker combinations, French pronouns, the way our math teacher, Mr. Halverson, always had a snot drop at the end of his nose. Maybe it would fall off, and maybe it wouldn’t; sometimes I’d spend the period watching it, waiting for it to plop on someone’s desk. Or for Mr. Halverson to notice it was happening and get himself a tissue.

  Anyway, right after that, Maisie switched topics to Aspen Garber, who might have been staring at James Ramos during math, whatever that was supposed to mean. And even though usually the topic of James Ramos made me switch mental channels, I leaped into the conversation.

  “Oh yeah, Aspen wishes James Ramos liked her,” I declared. “But ha. We know he likes Kailani.”

  * * *

  Besides being a distraction from home, the other good thing about school was science class. Our teacher, Ms. Molina, had a lab next door to her classroom where she kept all sorts of incredible things and creatures in small glass tanks—a hissing cockroach, a praying mantis, a box of shark teeth. Along the window ledge were alien-looking plants with names she liked saying: Kalanchoe tomentosa. Echeveria elegans. Schlumbergera bridgesii.

  Science was right after lunch. So sometimes if I got to class early, Ms. Molina would let me poke around her lab for a few minutes. She never tried to force me to chat about schoolwork, or even checked up on “how things are going” in that teachery sort of way. She just let me look at stuff, every once in a while making random comments like, “The cockroach is off carrots lately; think I’ll try some bananas,” and “Wouldn’t it be cool to get an axolotl?”

  Being in Ms. Molina’s lab reminded me of something, somewhere happy, but at first I couldn’t figure out what.

  Then I remembered.

  * * *

  A vacation trip to Chicago, four years ago. All six of us at the Art Institute, where they have something called the Thorne Miniature Rooms—little shoebox-size rooms from different periods in history, decorated with fancy carved furniture and beautiful tapestries and so much detail you feel like moving right in. I mean, you could if you shrank yourself thumb-size.

  At first Gabriel grumbles about us going there. “It’s like some boring tiny dollhouse,” he says. “For girls.”

  “Omigod, you did not just say that,” Scarlett growls at him.

  But after a few minutes, Gabriel admits the exhibit is incredible. He even takes a selfie of the two of us—him and me—in front of the mini room that is supposed to be a French Revolution bathroom.

  “It’s like Bath
room World!” Gabriel exclaims. “Although what would be really awesome would be a mini Dunkin’ Donuts bathroom! With a teeny-tiny liquid soap dispenser. And a little bitty hand dryer. And microscopic graffiti—”

  “Shh,” Mom scolds him in her teacher voice. “Museum voices, please.”

  But the two of us—Gabriel and I—keep laughing way too loudly, adding other bathrooms it would be hilarious to see on display: the one at Thom’s Pizza, the one at the gas station, even the kids’ bathroom in our house. I think of myself as a person who notices things, but I can’t keep up with Gabriel, who seems to have a photographic memory when it comes to bathroom details: spooky motion-detector paper-towel dispensers, weird flushing handles, faucets that refuse to turn off, whatever you do.

  Afterward, we go to the museum gift shop, and Gabriel surprises me with a present—a tiny chair, the size of a Monopoly token, that looks like the ones in the French Revolution bathroom.

  “Thanks, but what am I supposed to do with this?” I ask him.

  “Nothing, Monkeygirl,” he says, giving me a goofy grin. “It’s a good-luck charm.”

  “Okay, but I don’t believe in luck.”

  “Yeah? Well, maybe you should.”

  * * *

  And after that lunch with Maisie and Kailani, when our social studies teacher was going on and on about research tools and bibliographies, and also during French class and math, I had this weird feeling like I’d shrunk myself thumb-size. And I wasn’t in my actual real life—which had a Gabriel-size hole in the middle of it, a hole so big it would suck you in if you even leaned in its direction—but in a miniature room somewhere, a tiny diorama, where tiny me was sitting at a tiny desk, taking notes, caring about all the things you were supposed to care about in that pretty, miniature world. And I couldn’t just leave, because people had come from all over, and had paid admission, and were lining up to watch me pretend.

  Third Week of December, Right before Winter Break

  Scarlett never officially kicked me out of our bedroom. But a month after Gabriel’s accident, it was clear that every day after school, and every evening, my sister expected to have our room all to herself. Which felt like she was pushing me away.

  I mean, it wasn’t like I was assuming that we’d talk about Gabriel, because I could tell she still didn’t believe he was actually sick. But the way Scarlett made it clear that she wished I was somewhere else kind of hurt my feelings. Also bothered me, because it was my room too.

  And it wasn’t just the not-talking-about-Gabriel that was making things weird between us. Scarlett never joked around with me anymore, or asked about my friends, or tried to tease me about which boy I liked (obviously not James Ramos). Her teasing used to drive me crazy, but now that she shot eye-daggers if I tried to chat about anything, I definitely missed the old annoying Scarlett.

  But I couldn’t force her to be that old way with me—and the new way was giving me a stomachache. Finally I relocated my laptop to the dining room to hang out with Aiden, who’d just started having serious homework. It used to be Mom who kept Aiden company while he did his math worksheets and practiced penmanship. But since Gabriel’s accident, she’d either been napping on the sofa in the afternoons, or in her bedroom yelling at insurance companies on her cell.

  Aiden never asked anyone else for help, or complained that Mom was ignoring him—but I couldn’t help thinking he seemed a little lost, with all his workbooks and notebooks and pencils dumped all over the table. So after a few minutes of watching him stare at a book while he sipped a juice box, I asked what he was reading.

  “It’s research,” he said, his eyes still on his book. “For a big project after winter break. It’s not due for a long, long time, but Ms. Felsenstein says we should start thinking.”

  “Really?” I tried to remember if we’d “researched” things back when I was in third grade. But that whole year was kind of a blur, just a bunch of spelling tests and birthday parties. “What’s the project?”

  “Well, it’s supposed to be a how-to,” Aiden said.

  “How to do what?”

  He finally looked up at me. “It’s up to us. But we need to describe it step-by-step.”

  “Awesome,” I said. “I could help you think up a topic. You could do How to Bake Bread. Or How to Tie a Tie.”

  He sipped his apple juice. “Thanks, Zinny, but I already picked something.”

  “Yeah? What?”

  “How to Survive Quicksand.”

  For some reason, I flinched at that.

  “Why?” I challenged him. “I mean, why that, of all topics?”

  “Because it’s interesting.” He held up a chewed-looking paperback with the cover half ripped off. “I’m reading about it, Zinny. There’s a special method.”

  “Seriously?”

  “Yeah. First you’re supposed to drop everything you’re holding, like a backpack. Then you take off your shoes.”

  “Your shoes? Aiden, if you’re in quicksand, the last thing you care about is saving your shoes.”

  “No, it’s not about saving them. Shoes create suction, especially boots. So if you take them off in time, it helps you to float on top. Then you lie back, like this.” He made his hand horizontal. “The more you spread out, the harder it is to sink. And if you have a walking stick, you keep it underneath you. Like this.” He held a pencil under his hand.

  “Okay, but who actually uses a walking stick?”

  “Explorers. They’re supposed to.”

  I studied my little brother’s face. His brown eyes were huge and his mouth looked pinched, like he was sucking an invisible straw.

  “Aiden, you’re not actually worried about this, are you?” I asked. “Because it’s not like quicksand ever happens around here.”

  “But it could,” he insisted. “It can happen anywhere. See?” He opened his book and handed it to me.

  I read:

  Quicksand is a real phenomenon. Just about any sand or silt can temporarily become quicksand if it is sufficiently saturated with water or subjected to vibrations, such as those that occur during an earthquake.

  “Yeah, but.” I pushed the book back at him. “It’s incredibly rare, you know? Like a one-in-a-billion chance of happening, and definitely not in Oregon. Shouldn’t you pick a topic that isn’t so… out there?”

  Aiden’s lower lip pouted. Suddenly I had a picture of how he looked to other people, the kind of kid who could burst into tears at any minute. And that was when it hit me that he’d been spending every afternoon alone, with his homework and his juice boxes. Never having after-school play dates, the way you usually did in third grade.

  “Trust me, Aiden,” I said. “If there was quicksand around here, I’d definitely have stepped in some by now. Although we do have potholes.” I smiled encouragingly. “Maybe you can do that: How to Survive Falling into a Pothole.”

  “That’s just boring, Zinny.”

  “No, it’s not! It’s useful! Or what about How to Survive If You Step in Dog Poop. Or a Wad of Bubble Gum.”

  He shook his head.

  “Or How to Survive When a Squirrel Falls Down Your Chimney and Knocks Over the Christmas Tree. Remember when that happened?”

  “Nobody else cares about that,” Aiden said. “Just our family. Anyhow, I’ll have to say the how-to in front of the whole class, so it needs to be cool.”

  “Come on, Aiden. That squirrel was extremely cool.”

  I considered reminding Aiden how Gabriel had dressed up as Santa and lured the squirrel into a sack of gingerbread. But Aiden crossed his arms and shook his head. He didn’t want to hear it.

  “Okay,” I said. “So how about this: How to Survive an Attack of Flying Squirrels.”

  “Flying squirrels attack?”

  “Not really,” I admitted. “That’s why it’s a funny topic.”

  “Okay,” Aiden said doubtfully. I could tell he was thinking. Suddenly his eyes lit up. “Or How to Survive a Scorpion That Sneaks into Your Juice Box When You
Aren’t Looking.”

  I grinned. “Exactly. Perfect! Or how about How to Survive If You’re in a Wind Tunnel Full of Frogs.”

  “Yeah,” Aiden said. “Frogs and toads.” He was giggling now.

  “Or what about How to Survive When You’re Stuck in an Elevator with a Person Who Uses Too Much Perfume.”

  “Yeah, I hate that. Or How to Survive If Zombies Attack You on a Ferris Wheel.”

  “You mean the zombies climb up the Ferris wheel while it’s moving?”

  “No, Zinny, they’re in the next car. And you didn’t know it.”

  “Ah,” I said. “And you mean all of a sudden they lean over…”

  “Yeah. And attack! While the whole thing is spinning around really fast.” Aiden rotated his arm, knocking some papers off the table.

  “Okay, now that’s a great topic,” I said, laughing. “You could research Ferris wheel speeds.”

  “Also zombies!”

  “What’s all the laughing in here?” Mom was standing by the table, blinking as if her eyes weren’t used to daylight. Maybe after yelling at the insurance companies, she’d been napping; she’d gotten home from the hospital very late last night.

  “Sorry, Mom,” I said quickly. “We’ll try to keep it down.”

  “No, honey, I’m not telling you to be quiet. But what’s so funny?”

  Aiden and I looked at each other.

  “Zinny was just helping me with homework,” he said, all the smiling gone from his eyes. “But now I need to get back to work.”

  He returned the quicksand book to his lap, took a long sip of juice, and started reading.

  Christmas, Two Years Ago

  Christmas morning starts with a crash.

  As soon as we hear it, Scarlett and I leap out of our beds and run into the living room. Gabriel is standing there, staring at our Christmas tree, which is now smashed against the rug. Most of the ornaments are still stuck to the branches, but some of them (the glass icicles, the gold tin balls) have been shaken loose, shattered all over the room.