She sweeps through the house, showing me the emergency numbers, snacks, bathrooms, and fire extinguisher. “Ty’s bedtime is eight-thirty, but he’ll want to stay up late, because you’re here. You can keep him up as late as you can stand him.” She waves her phone at me. “And you can call if you need anything, but I probably won’t hear my phone at the club. Text is better. I’ll check it periodically.”
I nod and Jenna looks at me sadly again. “I wish I could stay,” she says quietly. “Believe me, I’d rather be here with you.”
I smile, though I know it looks forced. “We’ll be fine. Have fun.”
She takes a deep breath. “I’ll try. But I promise nothing. Thank you again.” Then she breezes over and joins Alec at the door. He barely glances at me, and they’re gone. I notice her long black sweater hanging on a hook behind the door next to Alec’s leather jacket.
I was good with them living together when it was an abstract concept, like the idea of a picnic on a beach. It seems fine in theory, but in reality your paper plates blow away and there’s sand in your teeth.
I look down at Ty. “So,” I say. “What do you want do?”
He doesn’t answer my question. “My mom likes you,” he says.
I blink at him for a second. “I like her, too.”
“Do you want to kiss her?”
God, do I. “Yes. But I can’t. You know the rules, right? She’s not allowed to date anyone until she and Alec are ready to break up the band.”
“In four years.”
Jenna has clearly already explained this to him, and I’m grateful for that. “Right.”
He rolls his eyes. “Four years is forever. Mom says I can’t have a dad for at least four years. Katelyn from school says we’re not a real family because I only have a mom and not a dad.”
Ouch. I think for a second that kids are mean, but it’s not like we really improve when we get older. “Well, Katelyn is wrong,” I say. “And also judgmental. Do you know what that means?”
“Yes. That’s what Mom says about the people on the news.”
I laugh. “Exactly.”
“Katelyn doesn’t have a dad either. But she has a real family because she has two moms.”
“Seriously?”
“Yes,” Ty says, very seriously indeed. “But I don’t want two moms. I have one mom and she’s great.”
“She is great. And Katelyn needs to learn about irony.”
“What’s irony?” Ty asks.
I think about that, but I’m not sure how to explain it. “In this case, it’s when someone ought to understand something, but they don’t.”
“Katelyn doesn’t understand,” he says. “And Mom says no matter how mean she is, I’m not allowed to explain to her that Mom isn’t allowed to get married for four years. But sometimes my mom calls her moms and has a chat.”
I bet she does. “Good for her.”
“But I’m allowed to tell you because you already know. Do you know how old I’ll be in four years?” Ty’s clearly not giving up on this four years thing.
“Tell me.”
“I’ll be twelve. I won’t even need a dad anymore.”
“Nah,” I say. “That’s not true. Do you know how old I am?”
Ty shakes his head solemnly.
“I’m twenty-two,” I say. “And I still need my dad.”
Ty’s eyes widen. “Really?”
I’m not sure if this is a reaction to how ancient I am, or to the dad thing. “Really.”
Ty grimaces. “Four years is still stupid.”
“Yeah, well. Your mom promised Alec. You wouldn’t want her to break a promise, would you?”
He shrugs. “We should tell Alec to change the rules.”
I sit down on the fluffy white couch behind the triangular coffee table, and lean back against the cushions. “Yeah, maybe. But if your mom was with someone else, Alec wouldn’t live here anymore. Wouldn’t you miss him?”
Ty thinks about this. “We wouldn’t see him anymore?”
“You probably would. But he’d be like a friend who comes by, not someone who lives with you.”
“That would be fine,” Ty says. “Alec doesn’t really spend much time with me anyway.”
My heart squeezes a little. The public face is all about how much Alec loves Ty, how he’s a real part of their family. “Does that bother you?”
Ty shrugs again. “No. He’s not really my dad. It’s just for show, like a play. And sometimes he and Mom fight, but not like with Mason. Alec isn’t a douche.”
“I appreciate the distinction,” I say. I expect Ty to be confused at that, but he’s not even paying attention.
“Oh!” he says. “I need to show you something. But you can’t tell my mom about it because it’s a surprise for her birthday.” He narrows his eyes at me. “Are you good at keeping secrets?”
I laugh. “Yes. I’m good at keeping secrets.”
Ty takes off at a run up the stairs, and I spot a picture hanging above the banister. At first I think it’s Ty and Jenna. Her hair is lighter—a chestnut color—but Jenna’s is obviously dyed.
But this girl has a rounder face, and a different smile. On second look, I know it’s Rachel. Ty’s young in the picture, probably Ephraim’s age, which would mean it was taken not long before she died. Rachel has her arms around Ty, and neither is looking at the camera, but she’s squishing him up against her and they’re both laughing. I look up the stairs, but I only see pictures of Ty, not Jenna and her sister.
Ty returns with a stack of papers crookedly stapled together on one side, like the books Gabby and I used to make when we were little. Across the front, in uneven letters, Ty has written, The Adventures of Superpope. Below it he’s drawn a picture of what I can only assume is the popemobile, surrounded by tiny dots with lines shooting off them.
“Ah,” I say. “Are those bullets?”
“Yes. But they can’t hurt Superpope, especially when he’s in his flying popemobile. Here. Read it. You’ll see.”
He thrusts the book into my hands, and I turn the pages.
“See,” he says. “Here is the pope fighting crime. And here he’s saving a nana who’s crossing the street.”
On the next page, a man with an uncomfortably-square crotch is shouting at Superpope. In bright, menacing letters, Ty has written, Doosh.
I laugh. “You aren’t supposed to say that in front of popes!”
“I know,” Ty says. “It’s because it makes him lose his powers.”
Sure enough, on the facing page, the flying popemobile has crashed.
“I only have one more page so far,” Ty says. “I’m not sure what happens next.” His face brightens. “Maybe you can help me with it.”
“Sure. Though you have to do all the pictures. You’re a much better artist than I am.”
He looks suspicious again. “And you won’t tell Mom, right?”
“No,” I say. “Though I want to hear what she says when you give it to her. When’s her birthday?”
“August twenty-fifth. That’s at the end.”
“It is.” I commit that to memory. I want to ask Ty to let her open it when I’m around, but I can’t be sure we’d be able to arrange it. There’s no question in my mind she’s going to love it.
I turn to the last page, and find Superpope standing between a large TV and what I assume from the polka-dotted dress and the frizzy hair is a nana.
“What’s he doing here?” I ask.
“He’s saving the nana from the angry people on the news. Next he’s going to lose his powers when one of the angry people calls someone a douche.”
I laugh. “Does your nana like to watch the news?”
“Yes,” Ty says. “And my mom says not to believe anything they say on there, because it’s not good to be mean and angry like Donald
Trump.”
“Hey, he should be Superpope’s nemesis. Do you know what that means?”
“No,” Ty says.
“It’s like the main villain that you’re always trying to beat. Like the Joker is Batman’s nemesis.”
“Like Team Rocket,” Ty says. “They’re Ash’s nesmisis.”
“Nemesis. Exactly. And Donald Trump would be the perfect nemesis for Superpope, because he says bad words in front of nanas and popes.”
Ty’s eyes widen. “For real?”
To be fair, I don’t know that Trump has ever used the word douche in front of the pope, but I’m confident that if the mood struck him, he would.
“For real,” I say.
Ty scrunches up his face. “What if he’s too powerful for Superpope?”
“Nah,” I say. “Superpope is awesome. He needs a formidable foe. Do you know what that means?”
Ty shakes his head.
“Like a powerful enemy.”
“A nesmesis.”
I nod. “Exactly.”
Ty takes the book back from me. “I better go hide this, in case Mom comes home.” He races back up to his room, and when he returns, he jumps onto the piano bench. “Mom said you wanted to jam with me. She says you know ‘Merrily We Roll Along.’”
I get my cello and have to fiddle with the latch for a second to get it open. The little pin that holds it closed is bent, and I really should retrieve my spare from my dad’s basement even if I’m not playing on the street.
I pull June and my bow out of her case and sit down on the couch. “Do you want me to play melody with you? Or the accompaniment?”
He pauses for a moment, and I think maybe he doesn’t know what that is. “It’s the fancy part that goes with the melody,” I say.
He gives me a look. “I know that,” he says. “Play the melody first, just to make sure you know it. And then I’ll play it again, and you can accompany me.”
He over-enunciates the last part, and I smile. “Will do.”
We play through the song twice, and I improvise a part to go with it. When we finish, Ty turns around and eyes my cello.
“You want to try?” I ask.
His face lights up. “Can I?”
I motion him over. My full-sized cello is miles too big for him, but I don’t think he’s in danger of actually running up against that limitation in the three seconds I expect him to be interested in playing it. I have him stand behind the instrument and I sit behind him, supporting June and helping him hold the bow.
“This thing is taller than you are,” I say. “But I think you can handle it.” I do the fingering, and show him how to run the bow across the strings, which he does with broad strokes, making an amount of screeching I haven’t heard come out of my instrument since I was ten.
“Whoa,” I say. “Are you trying to hit all the strings at once?”
“Yes. I think I missed one.”
“Do you play the piano by smashing your arms down on the keys?”
He thinks about this. “Sometimes.”
“When you hit the strings all together, does it make notes, or noise?”
Ty pauses. “I like it, but I think the answer is noise.”
I laugh. “Fair enough.”
Ty makes a few more screeching noises and then lets go of the bow. “Can I have a snack?”
He may have lasted a whole four seconds. “Sure,” I say. “What do you want?”
“I don’t know. What is there?”
He probably has a better idea than I do, but I lay June down carefully beside the couch and walk into the kitchen and start checking out what’s available in the pantry. On the shelf above the snacks I see a row of cookbooks, with names like Cookies for All Occasions and The Big Book of Pies. Most of the books appear to be pie-related. I grin, remembering Jenna telling me how she got her love of baking from her grandfather, a grizzled Navy Captain who took up baking as a hobby after his retirement and spent Saturdays with her, making every pie imaginable. I can still hear her laugh as she talked about how excited she was when her parents finally got her an Easy-Bake Oven for Christmas, and how disappointed she was that very same day when she realized that baking by the heat of a single weak light bulb is the worst.
I could have listened to her talk about her life all night long.
I realize Ty’s still waiting, and so I scan the shelves and start calling options to him. I expect him to follow me in, but he doesn’t. He doesn’t even respond.
“Ty?” I call.
I hear a loud thunk. I walk back into the living room, but he’s gone. “Ty? Where’d you go?”
A muffled giggle arises from my cello case. June is still resting on the floor next to the couch, and the case lid is closed.
“Hmm,” I say. “I wonder where Ty could have gone.”
Ty giggles again, and I move over to the case, standing just above it. The latch has flipped closed when the case shut. He must not have supported it when he tipped it closed. I’m glad it didn’t clock him on the head.
“Oh well,” I say. “Guess I’ll have to pack up and go home.” I nudge the case, sliding it over on the carpet.
Ty squeaks, and I laugh. “Ah ha! I found you. Climb out of there.”
I hear Ty pressing on the lid, but the latch holds it closed. “I’m stuck,” he says.
“Yeah you are. Remember that next time you decide to close yourself in a box, okay? They don’t always open again.” I kneel beside the case and pull on the latch.
It doesn’t move.
Ty knocks on the lid. “It’s getting hot in here.”
“Hang on. It’ll just be a second.” I jiggle the latch. I’m sure there’s a trick to it, but it hasn’t been broken long enough for me to know what it is. I slide my nails—which are trimmed too short for this task—up under the pin, trying to wiggle it free.
And that’s when I notice the hem of Ty’s Squirtle shirt jammed in the pin. I bend down, looking at it from beneath. The cloth is wedged up under the bent pin, and the latch is closed over it. I try to push it apart, but it won’t budge.
“Shit,” I say. I check the other latches and wiggle the lid up and down, but it doesn’t move an inch.
“Felix?” Ty calls.
“I’m here, kid,” I say. And I sit there, staring at my broken cello-case latch.
Ty is stuck tight.
Thirteen
Felix
Okay, Ty,” I say. “I need you to try to help me open the case, okay?”
“Did you forget how?” Ty asks.
“No. But your shirt is caught in the latch and it’s stuck. Can you try to pull it out?”
“I can’t see my shirt. It’s dark in here.”
“Okay,” I say. “But you can feel it, right? Because you’re wearing it?”
He squirms inside the case. “It’s fuzzy in here.”
“Okay. Find the fabric that’s not fuzzy. That’s your shirt.”
“I feel my pants,” he says, “but my arms are stuck to the sides.”
He’s weirdly calm about that, and I hope he stays that way, because if he starts crying inside there I might join him. Jenna trusted me with him, and I let this happen. “Slide one up a little and reach the bottom of your shirt, okay?”
There’s a thump in the case. It isn’t anywhere near the place where his shirt is caught in the latch.
I look around. These cases are built to withstand blows, but I could probably cut the latch off if I went at it hard enough. But then I’d risk gouging the child inside, and I really don’t want to have to explain to Jenna why I stabbed her kid in the arm with a knife.
“Shit,” I say again.
“That’s not a nice word,” Ty says.
“I’ll watch out for Superpope. I wish I could call him to get you out of here.” Who
would I even call about this? A locksmith? They’d probably take forever and I have no idea how long it takes to suffocate in a cello case. “Ty, do you know where your mom keeps the screwdrivers?” If I can’t cut the locks off, maybe I can get better leverage with a flathead than with my fingers.
“I don’t know. Maybe the garage.”
“Okay. You wait here.” As if he can do anything else. “Don’t be scared, okay?”
“I’m not scared,” Ty says, as if the thought is ridiculous. “I like it in here.” He pauses. “But my face is getting sweaty.”
Shit. His isn’t the only one.
I run out to the garage and search around until I find a Rubbermaid container marked tools, and I can’t help but think that I definitely belong in that box. Jenna apparently isn’t much more of a handyman than I am, because the container doesn’t have much in it. I do find a screwdriver, though, and a utility knife, which I take just in case.
When I return, the cello case has moved a good foot from where it was. I hesitate, and inside the case Ty squirms, edging the thing another inch.
“Hey,” I say. “I thought I told you not to go anywhere.”
Another giggle.
I kneel beside the case again and work at the latch with the screwdriver, but it doesn’t budge. I swear again. “Okay, Ty. I’m going to cut some holes so you can breathe, okay? I need you to cooperate, so that I don’t hurt you.”
“Okay,” he says. I move to the wide end of the case. I know his feet are down there, because he’s talking from the skinny side. His head must be wedged in there too tight to turn. I tap on the side of the case with the hinges. Those areas are reinforced, but the top isn’t. I can probably cut through there, if I work at it. “I need you to move your feet over here,” I say. “All the way over until they hit the side.”
Ty squirms inside the case. “Okay,” he says.
I wish I could see inside to be sure he’s done it. I knock on the case again. “Your feet are on this side? Toward me?”
“I can’t see you.”
“But you can hear me, right?” I knock again. “Are your feet over here?”
“Yes!” Ty shouts. “I know what my feet are!”
Fair enough. At the far other side of the case, I gently cut through the top of the plastic with the utility knife. I get enough of the case cut away to stick all of my fingers through. Inside, I can see the hem of Ty’s jeans, and the tops of his sneakers.
Everything We Are Page 13
