by Mary Amato
Javier finds out and when I see him later he tells me that he asked Coach Stevins if Xander quit or if he wasn’t picked to be on in the first place.
“I don’t discuss my decisions with people,” the refrigerator said. “I will only say that I choose people who I think will be good team players.”
Javier laughs when he tells me this because he thinks it’s Stevins’s way of saying that Xander wasn’t chosen. “Everybody knows Xander isn’t a good team player,” he says.
I don’t know if it’s true, and I don’t care. I’m not going to worry about Xander Pierce anymore. It just feels good to know I’m on a team. Even if it is the Toilets.
During lunch and P.E., Xander tells everybody at least twelve times that his dad made Stevins take his name off the roster. I just listen and smile. Whatever, Xander. Whatever.
On my way out, I pass by the music room and a big poster board sign catches my eye.
As soon as I see it I know what I want to do.
39.
BREAKING THROUGH
When I get home from school, I run straight to Diamond’s apartment building. I hesitate at the front door thinking, What if they let Mudman loose? but I push myself inside. I run up to her floor and knock. No one answers.
I want to try Saint Francis, which is the closest hospital to us. Mom says it’s a long shot. She is guessing social services moved Diamond and her mom to a special shelter just for women.
“If I go to the hospital and she’s still there, will they let me see her?”
“Maybe,” Mom says. “If she’s still there. You have to go to the front desk and explain you’re a friend.”
“Why do you want to go to the hospital?” Michael asks.
“I want to tell Diamond something.”
“That singing girl?”
“Yep.”
“What do you want to tell her?”
“Just something.”
It’s not far, so I decide to run—get me in shape for the season. I promise I’ll be back in time because the Fry Factory is giving Mom another chance and letting her start at five thirty instead of five o’clock.
“They must be nice,” Michael says.
“They must be desperate,” Mom says.
The hospital is huge and it’s hard to figure out which door to go in. Finally I get to a wide, curved, silver desk with three computers, and sitting behind it, there’s a wide, curvy woman with lots of hair piled on top of her head. I figure she’s going to be all official and cold, like the desk, but when I ask if Diamond Follet is there and can I visit her because I’m a friend, a smile pops out. “Isn’t that sweet,” she says, and taps Diamond’s name into the computer with rainbow fingernails, flashy enough to compete with Ms. Beitz’s. “Sorry, honey. Checked out.”
“Is there a way you can tell me where she went, like another hospital or shelter?” I ask.
She apologizes and says she can’t and calls out, “Good luck,” to me.
As I’m leaving, I notice a tucked-in spot where there’s a statue of a saint. On the floor all around it are teddy bears and rattles and a bunch of cards and a sign that says, TO MAKE A DONATION, PLEASE SEE THE FRONT DESK. Taped to the sign, there’s a photograph of a baby wrapped in a blanket, and there’s a doctor or a nurse’s hand in the picture, and the baby is holding on to the person’s index finger. His eyes are closed and he has a tube up his nose.
It’s Charlie. I know it.
“He’s here? That baby from the Dumpster?” I ask the woman.
She nods, her mouth full because she just took a bite of a muffin. After she swallows and wipes the crumbs off, she says, “Everybody’s rooting for him. People keep bringing him little presents and saying prayers and donating money.”
“Is he going to be okay? Can I see him?”
She smiles. “No visitors allowed, but come around here and I’ll show you something.”
As I walk around the desk, she scoots her chair over to one of the other computers and taps something in. She moves the screen so I can see. “We call it Babycam. One of the nurses set it up because we kept asking how he was doing. He was in bad shape, but he’s not a preemie, so once the antibiotics kicked in, he started improving fast. Look at him.”
On the screen is a video of Charlie. He’s sleeping in a little white T-shirt and he has kicked his blanket down so you can see his soft tummy going in and out, slow and steady.
She smiles. “That’s him right now. This is live.”
His hands are in fists covering up his face, but then he moves and stretches one hand out, opening up fingers and closing them again in a kind of slow motion. No more tubes up his nose. His eyelids are smooth. He looks like he’s having a nice little dream.
She taps the screen with one of her rainbow fingernails. “Hey, sweetie! Hey, sweetie, we’re watching you,” she says.
I look at him and imagine my thoughts going right through the computer and into his mind. Hey, Charlie, hang in there. Everybody’s rooting for you. Everything’s going to be all right.
He stretches again, and his tiny mouth opens in a perfectly oval yawn, and we both laugh.
I’m coming back another day to check on you, Charlie. So don’t go getting in any trouble. His face settles down and his tummy goes in and out again, slow and steady and soft.
On the run back home, my feet don’t even hurt. My blisters must have healed.
I’m running toward our building when Michael calls down from our window. “She’s there, Trev!” He points to the Ride-On stop at the far end of our street. “The singing girl was here and now she’s leaving!”
I run. Diamond is at the bus stop following a woman onto the bus with a garbage bag in her good arm.
I shift into high gear. “Wait—”
The bus takes off.
“Wait—”
My feet barely touch the ground. The bus stops and I give it everything I’ve got. The door opens, and I climb on, breathless.
“You’re lucky I’m in a good mood,” the bus driver says as I flash my school ID.
The minute the doors close, I realize that I have no idea what I’m going to say. Too late to go back now.
Diamond is looking at me, surprised, the left side of her face still bruised and swollen. With one hand, she’s wiping away tears. The other arm is in a bright pink cast. She’s sitting with a woman in the last seat on the left side of the bus, her big garbage bag blocking the aisle next to her.
The seat next to her on the right is open. I step over her garbage bag and sit down next to a big old grandpa of a guy who’s got his eyes closed.
“Fancy meeting you here,” she says. “Where you headed?”
“I’m … I’m going to a friend’s,” I say.
“Where?”
I don’t know how to answer since I don’t even know which bus I’ve just gotten on, so I finesse a change of subject. “Hey, did anybody tell you?”
“Tell me what?”
“You made it.”
“What are you talking about?”
“The Stars Show. You made it.”
“I did?” She breaks into a smile. “I made the school talent show,” she says to the woman next to her.
“That’s nice,” the woman says.
The bus rumbles over a pothole.
I don’t know for sure what Diamond is thinking, but she’s quiet.
“Where are you going?” I ask.
“Bus station. This is my aunt. We’re going to live with her for a while.”
Her aunt has on big glasses and her mouth is closed up like a clam.
“My mom is coming later.” Diamond sees my face and adds, “She’s okay.”
“Will you still be at school?” I ask.
Diamond’s aunt gives her a look like don’t go blabbing all the details.
Diamond shifts her position and looks out the back window. “Nah. Different school.” She’s sad and she doesn’t want me to see it. She must be like my mom. She doesn’t like anybody seeing her cry
.
“Maybe you can come back and be in the show,” I say.
She shrugs. “Who cares.”
The bus pulls over. The grandpa beside me wants to get off, so I have to climb over the garbage bag, and then hold it up so he can get out.
Her aunt leans against the window and closes her eyes.
“That baby is going to be okay,” I say. “That Dumpster baby.”
“You finally get a TV?” she asks.
I have to smile because I did kind of see him on TV. It seems too complicated to explain about the hospital and the Babycam, so I just laugh it off.
“That’s good that he’s okay,” she says.
The bus rumbles over another pothole, and a confession pops out of me.
“You know, I made up a nickname for you,” I say.
“What?”
“Microphone Mouth.”
She laughs.
After a few seconds, I just say it. “I’m sorry I told Mr. Gonzalez that you put the cell phone in my backpack.”
She looks at me. And then she shrugs. “I can see why you did—because of the pen and everything, I mean. I was thinking about that just this morning.”
I nod. Done.
The bus turns a corner. It’s a street I’ve never been on.
I should get off, but it doesn’t feel complete. I wish I had something to give her for good luck.
“Hey, you got a marker?” I ask.
“Bottom pocket.” She turns so her backpack is facing me, and I unzip the bottom pocket. Inside is the silver marker that she took back right before Mudman came. I face the aisle and put one leg up so she can rest her cast on my knee. Then I start to draw. It’s a real high-quality pen. Permanent ink. Comes out looking just like liquid silver. I can only draw when the bus is at a stop sign, so it takes me a few stops to get it done.
She goes crazy over it.
Looks good, even if I do say so myself.
The bus pulls over.
I give her back the pen and get up to go and we catch eyes.
She was the first person I met at Deadly Gardens, the one who told us what was going on with Charlie. I guess you never know how your life is going to connect with other people’s lives.
“See you later, Mushroom,” she says, and grins.
“See you later, Microphone Mouth.” I walk up the aisle. The door whooshes open.
“Hey,” I call back. “I’ll buy your song when it comes out.”
Her smile lights up the whole bus. She tilts her head back and lets it rip, “Baby, if you love me, set me free!”
As I get off, I hear people clapping. She leans over her aunt and calls out the window, “Who’s your friend who lives here?”
“What’s it to you?” I ask.
“Just wondering.” She smiles and tosses me the silver pen, and the bus pulls away.
I only have to wait a few minutes for a bus back, which means no problem getting home in time for Mom to go to work, and I don’t know if it’s just me but everybody seems like they get on in a good mood today. I look at each person and try to guess where they’re going and what they’re going to do. When I get to the Deadly Gardens stop, there’s Juan at the far end of the parking lot, juggling. Maybe I can bring Michael and Tish down and we can all pass the ball around. It’s time the little guys learned some soccer skills.
I pass by the Deadly Gardens sign and stop. The ground around it is muddy and littered with dead leaves, broken glass, cigarette butts, and a half-buried candy wrapper. But there, right next to one of the signposts, is a beautiful brown mushroom sticking up on a perfectly straight long stem, as clean as can be.
Caramel-colored wavy cap. Dark brown gills. Silky stem. Cap open like an umbrella.
I swear there was nothing here yesterday but trash.
I crouch down. Miles of mycelia must be under this ground right here, under my feet, growing and making all these invisible connections and producing this perfect little guy. Miles of mycelia under my feet right at this moment.
Juan sees me. He’s jogging over. It’s crazy. He’s going to ask me what I’m looking at that’s so interesting.
I’m going to say, “A mushroom.”
Acknowledgments
A mycelial-like network of people supported my efforts in the writing of this book. Corinna Thornton, Jan Shauer, and Frances Evangelista all said yes when I asked them to read the earliest draft, and their comments were insightful. An interview in a great magazine—The Sun—introduced me to the work of Paul Stamets and inspired me to read his book Mycelium Running: How Mushrooms Can Help Save the World (Berkeley: Ten Speed Press, 2005). Stamets’s book and company, Fungi Perfecti, inspired me to inoculate my story with mycelia, and his comments on the final draft were much appreciated. I was also inspired and informed by the charming picture book Katya’s Book of Mushrooms, by Katya Arnold and Sam Swope (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1977); and an excellent pod-rot article on the USDA website’s Sci4Kids, “Attack of the Witches’-Broom!” by Hank Becker. The members of the Mycological Association of Washington (D.C.) greeted me warmly and responded enthusiastically to mycological questions, especially Raymond LaSala, Waldemar Poppe, and Reed Richter, the latter of whom also made comments on a draft.
When I was knocked flat by the writing process, Darcy Pattison’s Novel Metamorphosis: Uncommon Ways to Revise reminded me which bootstraps to use in order to pull myself up again. My admiration and thanks go to Noe Bravo, Manuel Martinez, Carlos Sosa, and Adolfo Lopez. Their fine skill and hard work inspired me to keep working during the hardest times. A fond nod must also go to science teacher Dan Lerner, who taught my kids to “perambulate to the egress.”
Heartfelt thanks to my friends: Jim Kuhn and Pete Looney for presenting me with beautiful mushroom photographs; the Leblanc family for providing me with a much-needed writing retreat; Mary Naden for understanding what it means to be on deadline; Karen Giacopuzzi for pitching in to help and for providing key insights on the final manuscript, especially during the crunch time; and Richard Washer for always responding to my calls with the perfect combination of encouragement, humor, compassion, and practical advice. Above all, thanks to my editor, Regina Griffin, for believing in this book even when I wasn’t sure I would ever finish; and to my family, Ivan, Max, and Simon, for reading drafts, listening to me vent, and understanding, with such patience and love, my need to disappear into another world from time to time. I’m grateful.
MARY AMATO
is the author of The Word Eater and The Naked Mole-Rat Letters, two beloved middle-grade novels that have appeared on numerous state lists. While she may be best known for her writing, Mary is also a cofounder of Firefly Shadow Theater (a puppet company now based in Princeton, Massachusetts), a musician in a group called Two-Piece Suit, as well as a teacher of creative writing. She lives in Maryland with her husband, Ivan, a science writer, and her two sons. Visit her online at www.maryamato.com.
