by Susan Haas
I am 13. Let me decide.
I had spelled it out on my cookie sheet as Mom and I finished math homework. It had nothing to do with geometric proofs, but she understood.
Afterwards, there were still weeks of discussion and research, but in the end they did, in fact, let me decide.
Handing over that decision was the best gift my parents could have given me because it gave me control over my sinkhole, control over the fear that tried to swallow me whole. Or at least it did for a while.
A nurse opens my curtain wide. “The MRI is finally open. Let’s get you in there while we can.”
Gus stands at the curtain like a Walmart greeter. His entire back side is wagging as he welcomes the techs who have come to roll me down to the MRI.
“Lexi, your ADD service dog has completely forgotten his real job,” Dad whispers to me. “He’s my animal avatar.”
I laugh. Dad has struggled with Attention Deficit Disorder his entire life, so he totally gets Gus. But “ADD service dog”? Seriously confusing, Dad.
Mom joins Gus at the curtain. As Walmart Greeter, she stinks.
“Before you start, make absolutely certain her stimulator is off. Also, make sure you draw any pre-op labs you might need while she’s asleep. She’s had enough pokes for the day.”
Truth.
The techs roll me through the curtain. I feel a rumble beneath my feet, like my sinkhole is on the move again. This is not my first MRI here in Kansas City. I had one this spring when we came to make final decisions about surgery. That one didn’t go exactly as planned. I thought I had dealt with all that, put it behind me, but right now, I’m not so sure.
I squeeze my imaginary rock. I turn it over in my palm and try to concentrate on the places where the edges poke into my skin. It’s a little weird, but the pain is somehow comforting.
The soft whir of wheels whispers, Hurry, hurry. Before it’s too late.
Deep breath in. My story. Breath out.
CHAPTER 8
Age 5, The Year of the Buttered Cat
As I sat in the pitch dark of that closet, I knew one thing for sure. I had to find my gifts. But how? I couldn’t even get up off the floor by myself.
Hide-and-seek had fizzled so Kasey plopped me into my beanbag. “Okay, kiddo. Why don’t you sit here and think about those gifts for a while?” she said.
Hannah picked up her book and sighed. “Go ahead. I’ll watch her. But you all owe me.”
Everyone scattered.
Luke collapsed at my feet. He rested his chin on my leg and looked up at me like, “Well? What are they?”
That’s the problem, Luke. I have no idea.
I made a list in my head—Gifts I Might Have—but that went nowhere. Every gift I thought of was somehow related to the two I already knew. I was smart, but that had a lot to do with my memory. I was an expert at Hangman and Mad Libs, but that was because of my gift for words.
I squirmed and twisted. I wanted to get up and run away from it all. This was way harder than I thought it would be.
Hannah put down her book and smiled softly. “Wanna play Hangman or something?
I stuck out my tongue and squealed. Maybe using an old gift could help me find a new one.
She dragged me onto her lap and pulled over my cookie sheet. Of all the kids, Hannah was best at helping me spell. She knew how to hold my body and wrist just right.
“Okay, what’s it gonna be?” She held up two fists. “Right for Mad Libs or left for Hangman.”
I swatted left, but instead of hitting her fist, I sent the cookie sheet clattering to the floor. The noise must have startled Luke because he jumped up and yelped. The Cat, who had been staked out under a tent of old newspapers, bounded over and weaved in and out of Luke’s legs, purring loudly. Luke ignored him.
“I don’t know why we ever got you a cat,” Hannah said with a sigh. “You don’t appreciate pet ownership.”
Luke stretched and fell back asleep, but The Cat stayed put. He pushed his paws back and forth on Luke’s belly. Suddenly, Luke lurched forward and snapped. The Cat yowled and ran off.
“Mom!” Hannah shouted. “Luke just tried to eat The Cat!”
“I’m sure he didn’t try to eat him. He probably just got fed up,” Mom said, appearing in the doorway. She opened the back door and The Cat flew outside. She held up my shoes. “Anyway, we need to get to the grocery store if we want to eat tonight.”
It rained every day for the next week. Other than therapy appointments, I stayed home because getting me in and out of the van in bad weather was a nightmare. My family seemed to have forgotten all about the prophecy. It didn’t matter. Kali had said self-discovery was a private road trip, and that seemed about right.
Just thinking about gifts, however, had gone nowhere. I needed to get up, get out, and search. But how? I needed my body to find my gifts and my gifts to find my body.
On Saturday, the rain finally stopped, and sun peeked through the late afternoon clouds. Dad decided it was time to tackle a garage-swallowing junk pile. He hadn’t been outside long when he shouted for us to come see what he’d found.
Kali, Kasey, and Mom, with me clinging like a koala bear to her hip, ran outside.
Dad pointed to a tarp-covered lump. “Guess what’s under here!”
“Possum?” Kasey guessed.
Everyone stepped backwards.
Dad whisked away the tarp. “Voilà!”
It was a beat-up old stroller.
“That’s it?” Kali asked.
Dad clasped his chest, pretending to be offended. “This is Lexi’s new ride. Lexi, today you join a proud tradition of Haas children who have called this their first set of wheels.”
“And only set of wheels,” Kali mumbled.
“I don’t know,” Mom said. “I don’t see how that could work for her.”
“You worry too much,” he said.
He kissed her cheek and pried me from her arms. He buckled me in and stuffed rolled-up towels around my head and hips to hold me in place.
“Pretty cool, Lex,” Kasey said. “Are you ready to take her out for a spin?”
Out? Yes! That was exactly what my gift search needed.
I stuck out my tongue as far as I could, but when I did, my head jerked to the side. My face smooshed into the towel.
Mom sighed.
Dad jiggled my arms until my muscles relaxed.
“Don’t worry, Mom,” Kali said. She clipped Luke’s leash to his collar. “We won’t let all this luxury go to her head.”
Dad called after us, “Take it nice and slow. It’s a police magnet. Oh, and registration is in the glove compartment.”
Kasey, Kali, and I turned off our quiet street and onto the main road, where cars zipped past rows of brick two-stories. The air was thick as syrup and steam rose from the pavement.
Sweat tickled my face and neck. I wanted to wipe it away, but when I tried to lift my arm, my entire body twisted. If my gifts were out here, I would never find them.
After a couple of blocks, Kasey wiped my forehead. “Maybe we need to go home and let Dad work on your new ride. You know, add a few more features.”
Right then, a shirtless boy jogged past, sweat rolling down his tanned back.
Like I said, there have been times in my life when, out of the blue, words would just pop out of my mouth. I’d have a thought, same as always, but instead of getting stuck in my brain, the words would find a trap door or something and escape.
This was one of those times.
I took a deep breath and blurted, “Oh, yeah!”
My excitement was actually for rolling back to our air-conditioned house, but Kasey, Kali, and the boy didn’t know that. He spun around to face us, jogging backwards for a few steps.
“Sorry!” Kali said. She pointed to me. “It was our little sister.”
All eyes turned to me, so I did what any kid would do in that situation. I pretended to be asleep. Obviously. Eyes closed, droopy head, and even a little drool dr
ibbling from my mouth. From the corner of my eye, I saw the boy smile and give them a thumbs-up before he jogged off.
Kasey crossed her arms. “What the heck, Lexi? That kid is a lifeguard at the pool! Do you know what it’s gonna be like next time we go? I’ll tell you what. Awkward. Super Awkward.”
“She can’t help it,” Kali said. “Sometimes her words just … happen.”
“Yeah, and sometimes I’m not so sure.”
I was suddenly so hot I thought I might explode into a fireball. I wanted to say I was sorry, but of course no words ever came when I wanted them to. All I could manage was ggguuhhh.
Maybe words weren’t my gift after all. What good were they if they were stuck in my head? Or hurled out randomly like a weapon?
I arched and groaned.
“Chill out, Lex. It’s not so easy to be on the other side, either.”
The other side? Since when were we choosing teams? If we were, I knew what they would be. Everybody who could walk, everybody who could talk, everybody who could everything on one side. Me on the other.
We walked home in silence. When we reached our driveway, I could see Mom and Dad outside the garage. Their hands were flailing and gesturing. At first, I thought they were dancing. Outside. Where everyone could see them. That jolt of electricity that comes when parents do something embarrassing shot up from the base of my spine.
Kali’s pace slowed. As we inched closer, I realized Mom and Dad weren’t dancing. They were arguing.
The day’s mail was scattered on the ground. Mom was waving a letter in hurricane circles. At the top, a fancy gold heading flashed with each turn of her hand.
“I don’t see how this is going to fix anything, Ken. We’ve been down this road before. It’s not going to work. It can’t work. We have to focus on fixing it, not on getting even.”
“This is not about getting even,” Dad said pointing to the letter. “This is about what was stolen from Lexi. It’s about the missing evidence.”
“What missing evidence?” Kasey asked.
Mom and Dad jumped. Mom let out a long sigh and bent to pick up the mail.
“Oh, it’s nothing,” Dad said. He smiled. “You’re back awfully fast. How was the walk?’
“Thanks to Lexi, we’re gonna have to find a new place to swim,” Kasey said.
Dad leaned on his broom. “Lex, did you use your super powers to blow up another pool? The neighborhood association’s gonna be ticked.”
“It’s not funny, Dad,” Kasey said. “When she learns to talk she’s gonna be a nightmare.”
Kali heaved me onto her hip. When she opened the back door, cold air rushed out. Luke bolted in.
I bent sideways in Kali’s arms, hoping to get a glimpse of The Cat. I hadn’t seen him since his run-in with Luke earlier that week, but no one else seemed to have noticed he was missing.
“What’s wrong?” Kali asked.
I tried to make cat sounds.
“Sorry, kiddo. No idea. Try again?”
I breathed in deep. “Cu. Cu.”
She frowned. “Maybe spell it out with Mom later? Oh, guess what? It’s almost time for your favorite show!”
With her free hand, she dragged my beanbag to my TV-viewing spot and propped me up so I could see. I wasn’t buying her distraction. I had spent enough time in this spot to know that if I arched hard enough, I had a direct view into the kitchen. If The Cat wasn’t stalking Luke, he would be scouring the table for crumbs. In my enthusiasm, I threw my head back too hard and toppled to the floor.
Kali shook her head. “I don’t get it. You love Word Girl. Look! She’s flying over the city, ready to fight crime with … with vocabulary … and … stuff.”
She sat me back up. I launched myself sideways again, this time on purpose.
How could I sit here and watch TV when so much was missing? Missing gifts. Missing evidence. And now a missing cat.
CHAPTER 9
Age 5, The Year of the Buttered Cat
I spent the rest of Saturday afternoon obsessing over all that was missing in my life. There was my body and my gifts, obviously, but according to Dad there was more. Lots more. Something stolen. Missing evidence. And that letter! Maybe whoever sent it could help me get everything back. But who was it? The fancy gold lettering looked official and important. Well, two things were for sure: 1) I had no way of getting my hands on it, and 2) Mom and Dad were not talking.
Sunday, our family gathered in the den for our weekly viewing of Saturday Night Live. Since the show started so late on Saturday, Dad always DVR’ed it. At exactly three o’clock Sunday, he would shout, “SNL,” and like pigs called to dinner, everyone would drop what they were doing and shuffle to the TV.
“Lexi’s the only five-year-old in America allowed to watch SNL,” Kasey said as we settled in.
“That’s because she’s the only five-year-old who can understand it,” said Dad, pushing buttons on the remote.
When the show flickered onto the screen, Dad pulled me onto his lap and folded my legs crisscross applesauce. He wrapped his arms tight around me. I always felt calm and steady when he held me this way. It was like he was my muscles. As he squeezed me, his breathing slowed to match mine, like I was his heart.
The SNL band started to play. Dad shifted me a little so I was facing the screen, but when the announcer said, “Ladies and gentlemen, Rainn Wilson,” I slumped. I had seen this one last winter. Summer reruns were the pits when you could remember every single joke and skit.
Pretty soon, my thoughts drifted back to my missing things. I had to find them. All of them. By the first commercial break, I had settled on a plan. I would tackle my list from the bottom. Start easy and work up to the hard stuff.
After SNL, everyone scattered. Mom sat with me to spell. I pulled down letters until my cookie sheet read: The Cat is gone
She laughed. “That cat goes missing as often as my car keys. When he gets hungry enough, he’ll be back.”
But he didn’t come back. A month passed with no sign of The Cat or my gifts.
Maybe The Cat would eventually turn up on his own, but I knew if I wanted to find my gifts, I would have to get up, get out, and search.
By September, I had hitched my hopes to one thing: MS. JOANN’S FRENCH FOR HOMESCHOOLERS.
The heading screamed in shimmery blue ink from a flyer stuck on our fridge door. Beneath the heading was a drawing of a little girl waving a French flag and under that, “Classes resume September 6. Your class is: Level 2.”
“Level 2” was handwritten in red marker. At the bottom, the flyer read, “Please remember, do NOT park on my grass or my neighbor’s grass!!”
I had started French with Ms. Joann the year before when my speech therapist told Mom a second language sometimes helps with “speech delays.” Spoiler alert: it didn’t work. But Mom thought it would do me good to hang out with other kids once a week, even if most of them were a year or two older than me. When the Level 2 info arrived, she signed me up again.
I had mixed feelings about it from the day the flyer appeared on the fridge. French was okay, and the kids were nice enough, but I had four friends at home. Why would I need more? But now, now that I was searching for gifts and evidence and maybe even more, I was actually looking forward to class.
The first day back, Mom parked at the bottom of Ms. Joann’s driveway. As she unbuckled me from my car seat, she nodded to two boys poking sticks into a wide, muddy ditch.
“Avery. Marc. Excited for a new year?”
The boys shrugged. They didn’t look up.
“I bet you’ll learn loads this year,” she continued.
I snorted. Mom gave me the stink eye, but she knew I wasn’t wrong. These two hadn’t turned in a single homework assignment last year.
Marc pulled his stick from the mud, examined it, and flicked it towards Avery. Red mud spattered Avery’s jeans. Avery laughed and returned the favor.
“Well … see you in class,” Mom said brightly, and we began our trek up Ms.
Joann’s long, hilly drive.
Halfway up, Mom stopped to catch her breath. “I think you gained a few pounds since spring. Either that or I’m getting old.” She pointed towards the house. “Lexi, look!”
In the front yard, three girls stood hunched and gasping beside a ginormous tree. I smiled. They were McRae, Martine, and Martine’s younger sister Alexa—three girls from Level 1.
Each had a hand or foot pressed against the tree trunk. Two other girls—one tall and dark, and the other tiny and blonde—raced towards them. The Trejos! It looked like all the girls from Level 1 were back!
“C’monc’monc’mon, Elleeeeee,” McRae yelled, waving her free hand towards the dark-haired girl.
Elle planted a hand on the trunk just as the blonde girl made a swipe for her T-shirt. “Base!”
“Elle Trejo, I got you! I definitely got you!”
“Face it, Anna. Big sisters rule.” Elle high-fived Martine.
Everyone laughed. I screeched and arched hard. Even I had forgotten how fun these girls could be.
The girls looked up.
“Lexi!” Anna cried.
They all raced down the hill and swarmed around us.
“Did you have a fun summer?” Elle asked.
Tongue out.
“Cool! Whadja do?”
I tried to answer, tried to tell them everything—the beach, the prophecy, the missing cat. I took a deep breath and arched my back, trying to shove the words out of my chest, but all I could manage was a little groan.
My indifference from last year came flooding back. Why bother making friends here when no one could understand me?
Mom wrestled me back onto her hip. She told them I had gone to therapy and hung out with my brother and sisters.
She’s leaving out all the best parts.
Inside, parents chatted quietly. Older students recited French verb conjugations in the classroom near the kitchen. Ms. Trejo waved to Mom, and soon they were off in their own conversation. I twisted on Mom’s hip to see the girls. They had circled up and were playing a clapping game.
“Miss Mary Mack, Mack, Mack all dressed in black, black, black,” McRae sang quietly.
