by Karen Rivers
“I don’t . . .” she started.
But Solly had that look on her face, and Nat knew better than to chicken out now. She was lucky Solly was her friend. Solly was crazy, for sure, but she was fun and interesting, at least. And she never acted like XAN GALLAGHER was a big deal. That was a huge plus.
“Hey!” Solly snapped her fingers. “Wake up!”
“I was just thinking, that, um . . .”
“Were you holding your breath?” said Solly.
“No!”
“OK, I’m lighting it,” said Solly. She leaned forward with the lighter lit. “Put it between your lips! Then inhale when the flame touches it! Do I have to teach you everything?”
Nat giggled. She didn’t think it was funny—she was just nervous.
Solly touched the lighter to the cigarette and Nat inhaled.
Click-click-click, the camera went from somewhere in the bushes.
Click-click-click.
Nat dropped the cigarette and started to choke. She couldn’t remember to breathe in or to breathe out. Her throat was closing.
“Oh my gosh,” Solly said. She was pounding Nat on the back. “I’m sorry, Nat. Are you OK? Please be OK! I didn’t mean to!”
Then she ran away, leaving Nat with the pack of cigarettes, coughing so hard she thought she was going to die.
Even thinking about it now made her want to cry:
How the Lion jumped out of the shrubbery.
How her dad saw the photos on the Internet.
Right after that, her dad told her they were moving to Canada. He said that wasn’t why, but she knew it was.
It was Solly’s fault.
And the Lion’s.
Maybe more the Lion’s than Solly’s, actually. He must have offered her a deal. All Solly did was to go through with it.
“I forgive you, Solly,” Nat said out loud, with a mouthful of sandwich. “But I will never forgive the Lion.”
She put the sandwich down in the sand. It would be wrecked, but she didn’t care. Suddenly, she wasn’t even a little bit hungry anymore.
“So, Natters, are you done? Why didn’t you come in? Man, that water is great, by the way.” He paused. “Warm! Amazing!”
“Great, Dad. I’m glad to hear it.”
“Sooooooooooo,” he said. He sat down right next to her, his gigantic wet leg pressing against hers.
“DAD.”
“What? I just want to sit next to my girl, is that so wrong?”
“You’re wet!”
He shook his head like a dog, spraying her sandy sandwich.
“I guess I’m done,” she said.
“Hey,” he said. “Come on. We need to talk. I know you don’t like them talks. But I promise I’ll make it painless! We’ve got this!”
“DAD.” The sandwich in Nat’s stomach turned to stone. She leaned over, pressing on her belly. “It’s those talks,” she said, flatly, facing the sand. She picked up some sand and ran it through her hands. It was silky smooth and unbelievably warm. She wanted to crawl into it, like it was blankets on a bed. “About what?”
“Things!” said her dad. “Stuff! You know, life!”
Nat thought about how when people are going to die, their whole life flashes in front of their eyes. This was like that, only different.
He’s going to tell me about my mother, she thought. She held her breath.
Her dad cleared his throat. Grak, grak. It sounded like a spoon stuck in a garbage disposal. Grak. “I know I’m not a woman,” he started.
“Thank goodness,” interrupted Nat. “You’re way too hairy.”
“Hey now,” he said. “I’d make a gorgeous woman.”
“You’d make a hairy woman.”
Her dad stared at her soulfully, and then sighed and gazed thoughtfully out to sea. He put his hand on her shoulder.
“Stop being so actory,” she told him. “You’re driving me crazy!”
He graked again. “You’re thirteen today,” he said. “Man, it goes by fast. I can’t believe it! Thirteen! People are right, you know. Everyone says that it goes by so fast and you’re like, ‘I don’t believe you!’ But they’re right! They were all right!”
“DAD,” she said. “What were you saying?”
“I’m saying it! This is it! Are you listening, Nat-a-Tat?”
“DAD, yes. I wish you’d just say whatever. Do you have cancer?”
“No! I’m so sorry you thought that. Were you worried? That sucks! I should have phrased it differently!” He took a deep breath. “The thing is,” he said, “now that you’re a teen, things are going to start happening. Changes, I mean. To your body.” He took a huge gulp of water. Then another one, which took care of the entire liter. He put the lid back on. “Your body is gonna start to—”
Nat interrupted. “Dad, it’s fine. We’ve had that talk at school. Every year, for the last three years. I know all the stuff. Please don’t. Please, please, please.”
He ignored her. He framed his hands in the air. “I think of it like a great blossoming, like your body is born in winter and then, BAM, you start growin’ up and then it’s SPRING! Spring! Think of it!”
“DAD,” Nat shouted. She picked up an entire handful of sand and dumped it onto her dad’s head.
Unbelievably, he just shook it off and kept talking. “—and one of these days, you’re going to get your period,” he said.
Nat’s blood ran cold. “Dad,” she said, quietly. “Don’t.”
He forged ahead like she hadn’t said anything at all. “I bought you some supplies at home, but I didn’t bring them to Mexico. Of course, this isn’t all going to happen tomorrow or anything. But you gotta figure out which thing is going to—”
Nat felt herself starting to cry. “Dad, if you even say the word ‘tampon’ out loud, I’m going to run into the sea and swim away forever, I swear to you. Please stop. Please. I know all this stuff! I don’t want to talk about it!”
Nat was seeing spots around her vision. She thought that maybe she was going to faint.
“Dad,” she said. “Dad.” Her ears were roaring. She was crying. She couldn’t stand it, and she didn’t know what specifically it was that she couldn’t stand: Was it just him trying to tell her about her own body or that her own body was going to change and she wasn’t ready and this was what moms were for, right?
Then something broke through the white noise.
Click-click-click.
Click-click-click.
That something was the sound of a camera clicking.
Both Nat and her dad swiveled toward the sound. Nat was crying so hard that snot was pouring down her face. Actual snot!
The camera kept clicking.
She blinked. It was the Lion.
“No,” she shouted. “NO!”
Her dad was on his feet and he was running in his wet shorts, glistening like a weird, shiny superhero, and then he was on the Lion and Nat knew he wasn’t going to hug him.
Her dad was so huge, and the Lion was so small.
“Dad,” she screamed, but nothing came out of her mouth.
It was like a nightmare.
It was happening in slow motion.
“Stop, you’ll kill him,” she mouthed.
“WHAT ARE YOU DOING?” Nat heard her dad shouting. “WHY ARE YOU DOING THIS TO US? WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE?”
She had never heard her dad so angry before. She had once plugged the blender into a faulty outlet, and she felt exactly like she did at that moment: stuck to the current, scared, and like she might die.
Her dad grabbed the Lion’s camera. The Lion’s mouth was open. He was as pale as her dad’s terrible favorite white cheese.
Then Nat’s dad threw the camera toward the sea. They all watched as the camera hit the crest of a wave and disappeared.
>
The Lion made a belching sound. Nat wondered if he was going to throw up.
Nat said, “Holy cow.” She didn’t think she’d ever said that before in her whole life.
“Oh man,” said XAN GALLAGHER. “Lion, I’m sorry, man. You know my kid is off-limits. My kid! Me and Natters, we were having a moment. A private moment.” Her dad slumped down on the sand and dropped his gigantic head into his gigantic hands. “I shouldn’t have done that. Man, I am so sorry.”
The Lion made another noise in his throat, like he’d been so scared that he’d swallowed his voice and was now choking on it. He sat down next to her dad. Nat got up. She couldn’t feel her legs. Somehow she stumbled over to her dad and sat on his other side. A crab scuttled over Nat’s foot, over the hearts that Solly drew.
“What the heck,” the Lion mumbled, finally. “That camera was five thousand dollars!”
“I’ll buy you another one,” said Nat’s dad.
The Lion got a sour look on his face. He looked from Nat to her dad and back again. “So,” he said, “you finally tellin’ her the truth about her mom?”
Nat’s legs surged with strength. She stood up.
She stood right over the Lion.
She took a deep breath.
“I will never forgive you,” she said. “Not ever.”
Then she turned and started to run.
The Amazing Race
There was a German word, mutterseelinallein, which meant intense loneliness, but what it really translated to directly was “your mother’s soul has left you.”
“Mutterseelinallein,” Nat said out loud.
She was back in her air-conditioned, cavernous room. Her shoes were full of sand. She took them off and dumped them on the floor, where they made a small, slippery sandpile.
She wanted to know what the Lion had been about to say, but the last person she wanted to hear it from was the Lion.
Nat wanted to hear it from her dad. She made a decision. She was going to ask him.
Nat had been mutterseelinallein for her whole life.
Nat’s mother’s soul left when she was born.
She didn’t want to be mutterseelinallein anymore.
The magazine she had taken from Harry’s bathroom was in her suitcase. She had packed it, just in case, but she didn’t take it out. She could picture the cover: her dad’s huge grin and her own red face, scrunched up in the turquoise baby carrier.
But Nat didn’t want to read the truth in a magazine.
She wanted to hear it from his own mouth.
That’s what she wanted for her birthday. More than seeing the whales. More than anything.
She wanted the truth.
I’m thirteen now, she told herself. I am old enough for this. She felt excited, and also like she might throw up.
Someone was her mother.
“I have a right to know,” she said out loud. Her voice sounded wobbly, even alone in her room.
Nat got off the bed and looked in the mirror. She looked the same as she did the day before. Her boobs were still . . . there. “Boobida,” she whispered, and stuck out her tongue.
She looked at her body sideways. Maybe she was getting used to them.
She knew everyone was waiting for her downstairs.
She knew she wanted to talk to her dad before they went to see the whales.
She also knew she had to write the postcard.
She found the pen and the frog postcard and held them both in her hand.
She imagined Solly rolling her eyes. She saw Solly lighting the cigarette.
Nat pictured her friendship with Solly like a piece of melting plastic, being pulled from two sides. The plastic was a long long thread stretching from her heart to Solly’s heart, but now it was broken. She didn’t want to fix it, but she wanted to say goodbye.
Goodbye and thank you.
Anyway, she was still a little bit mad.
Dear Solly, Nat wrote.
I forgive you. (You know what for.)
I don’t have my period yet.
I have not kissed a boy.
Love and goodbye,
Nat(alia)
It seemed to Nat there was a lot to say that she couldn’t say, but it was right there in between the words if Solly wanted to read it closely enough.
It was complicated.
Solly, of all people, should get that.
Nat put the postcard in her pocket. She could mail it from the SUPERMARKET mercado.
Nat got changed into a clean T-shirt and jeans and put her sneakers back on. They were a bit tight. Like everything else, her feet were suddenly growing.
She washed her face and brushed her hair and her teeth. She sniffed her armpits, which didn’t smell, but she put on the natural deodorant her dad had left on her bathroom counter with a bow on the top.
“Ha ha, Dad,” she said. She sniffed the deodorant. It smelled like Creamsicles.
“Amazing,” she said.
• • •
Downstairs, everyone—Harry and her dad and Harry’s parents—was sitting around the big table in the dining room. There were balloons all over the ceiling.
“Where did you get balloons?” she asked, just as they all shouted, “HAPPY BIRTHDAY!”
In the middle of the table, there was a huge cake. Happy Birthday, Nat! it said. Then, under that, it said, Feliz cumpleaños! There was a whale made out of icing diving between the words.
“I love it!” she said. “Thank you!”
She blew out the thirteen candles. I wish I could meet my mom, she wished silently. Just once.
“Did you wish about whales?” Harry whispered.
“No,” she whispered back.
“I love you more than cod,” her dad said.
“You don’t even like cod,” Nat said.
“I love you, Nat-a-Tat,” he said. “Happy birthday!”
“Yeah, you do,” she said.
Mr. Brasch stood up and clapped his hands, just like Mr. Hajeezi did at school. “We’re going to be late!” he said.
Outside, the sky was crowded with clouds of all different shades of white and gray. In between, there were tiny bits of blue, struggling to be seen. It made Nat want to blow really hard so that the clouds would part and let the blue out.
She used to do that, when she was a kid.
She used to believe that would work.
They drove past the closed restaurant and the T-shirt stand, then the post office, bank, and 7-Eleven. Everything seemed much closer to the house now that they were driving and not riding ill-fitting bikes. When they passed the no-bus bus station, Harry whispered, “Hanyauku!” and Nat giggled. There was something about Mr. Brasch being in the car that made her want to be quiet though.
“What’s that, Harry?” Mrs. Brasch asked Harry.
“Nothing, Mom,” said Harry.
“Oh, an inside joke!” said Mrs. Brasch. “That’s nice.”
“MOM,” he said. He sounded happier than he ever did at home. Maybe his dad was intimidated by XAN THE MAN, because he wasn’t correcting everyone who called Harry “Harry.” Maybe XAN GALLAGHER had even said something to him, something like, “Hey, li’l buddy”—that’s what he called Mr. Brasch—“you must be so proud of Harry for just being who he is, even when the whole world might not be so cool with it. You’re cool for doing that!”
Nat could practically hear him saying exactly that.
She could imagine Mr. Brasch nodding uncomfortably and making a calibration in his closed mind, shifting the dial from “Closed” to “Slightly Open.” She imagined the name “Harry” sneaking in through that open door.
This was good.
At least, it was better.
It really, truly, suddenly felt like they were on vacation from themselves and everything that
had been so awkward and clunky about their lives in Sooke.
Nat wasn’t the least bit lonely here.
They were on vacation from loneliness.
They were on vacation from complications.
Or, at least, they had been. Until this morning.
Nat’s dad turned on the car stereo, and music blasted over them. “Man, I love this song. You like?” He turned to look at the kids.
“Dad!” said Nat. “Eyes on the road!”
“Mr. Gallagher!” shouted Harry.
Then there was a terrible thump.
“DAD!” Nat screamed.
The car had stopped in a cloud of dust.
“What the heck was that?” said Nat’s dad.
Nat was already out of the car. There, practically invisible in the dust, was the dust-colored dog.
“TUFTY!” shouted Nat.
Tufty got up, barked at Nat once, twice, three times, and then ran off into the brush.
“I thought you killed him!” Nat said, getting back into the car. “That was Tufty. He’s a stray.”
“You hit that dog, Xan,” said Mr. Brasch. “Gosh. Maybe keep your eyes on the road.” He reached over and turned off the radio just as Nat’s dad was starting to hum. He stopped abruptly, midnote. “‘Little Lion Man,’” he said. “Huh. I used to like that song. But now it reminds me of someone.” He sighed and then shook his head. “The Lion won’t be back, Nat-a-Tat, not this time.”
“I know, Dad,” Nat said. “Let’s not talk about it. Seriously.”
“Are you speaking in code?” said Mrs. Brasch. “I love your relationship with each other. It’s so cute.”
“Yep yep,” Nat’s dad said. “We’re not speaking in code.”
“So you are?” Mrs. Brasch asked.
“He means nope,” said Nat, helpfully.
“It’s like ‘yeah, no,’” supplied Harry. “Or ‘no, yeah.’”
“None of you are making sense,” said Mr. Brasch. “I’m feeling a little carsick.”
The car swooped along, past the SUPERMARKET mercado. The parking lot was still empty. Nat wondered if the pretty cashier was through the book yet, or if she’d started a new one. She wondered if the dancing old lady was still mad. She wanted to ask if they could stop but couldn’t think of a reason, except for the postcard. When she remembered the postcard, she felt a bit lighter. But it was too late to stop then. They were past it. She would mail it later.
