Just My Luck

by Cammie McGovern

  I’ve never lost George before.

  “Do you want me to call Martin?” I can tell by her voice, she’s not even worried. She just wants to call Martin.

  “No,” I say. “Martin’s back home. What can he do from there?”

  I think about what our mom does when George gets lost. Usually she doesn’t panic at first. She says you have to think like George and remember what was on his mind when he wandered away. “He was talking about Santa Claus,” I say out loud.

  Lisa gives me a funny look to remind me that George is too old for Santa. “He loves Christmas,” I explain.

  She looks more confused. What does this have to do with where he might have wandered off to? I can’t explain, so I don’t bother. “George!” I call again from the middle of the intersection. The problem when George gets lost is that he never answers when he’s called. He gets too interested in whatever he’s looking at or listening to. Once we lost him for almost an hour on a picnic in the woods. Finally we found him next to an anthill, poking it with a stick. He hadn’t been that far away. He just hadn’t realized he should have called back.

  “George, if you hear me, say here I am!” I scream, then stop and listen.

  Nothing.

  “Don’t you want to use my phone?” Lisa offers. “You could call your mom? Or the police?”

  He’s been missing for maybe ten minutes now. I’m not going to do either one of those things. “Just forget it, Lisa. I’ll look myself. You can go home.”

  Apparently she’s been waiting for me to say this because she sticks her phone in her pocket and says, “Okay, I probably should. I’m sure my mom is wondering where I am.”

  I look at her and can’t believe it: she doesn’t care about George, or me. A minute later, she’s gone.

  I walk up one street, calling George’s name. I look down the driveways where he might have wandered if something in a garage caught his eye. This is the other problem with George. He has no sense of personal space or private property. He’ll wander into people’s garages, whether we know them or not.

  I look for open ones that he might have gone into. “George?” I call into one.

  “Who?” a gruff voice answers.

  There’s an old man bent over his toolbox, standing in the back.

  “Sorry!” I say. “I’m looking for my brother.”

  “He’s not here.”

  “Okay.”

  I go back to the corner where I first lost him and start to get really scared. It’s getting cold outside and windy, too. Leaves are blowing into the street, which makes me more scared. That’s another thing George loves. He follows blowing leaves sometimes.

  Lucky pulls at the leash in the direction of our house, but I can’t go back without George. I hold my breath and listen again.

  Nothing.

  “George!” I scream, standing at the corner where I was talking to Lisa. I run up another street in the opposite direction. “Lisa!” I can’t believe she ran off and left me without helping. Or maybe I should believe it. Maybe that’s what Martin and Mr. Norris were trying to tell me.

  Up ahead I see something that makes me even more afraid: there’s a house where someone has left the front door open. George loves open front doors. They’re his favorite thing about Halloween. He thinks it means he’s welcome to walk inside, which he always used to do until Mom and Dad made a rule: no walking past the candy bowl ever.

  Now there’s just an open door and no candy bowl to stop him.

  If he came this direction and saw this front door, he would definitely walk inside.

  I already know what would happen if a stranger screamed at him for being inside their house: he’d start to giggle. He always does when he’s in trouble, and it makes everything worse. No one understands why George laughs when everyone is angry at him. I go up to the porch of the house with the open door and call softly, “George?”

  I hear voices inside.

  I call again. “George? Are you in there?”

  Another terrible thought occurs to me. If he knows he’s in trouble at home—really big trouble—George will hide, sometimes for hours.

  It’s happened once before. He got so angry when the computer crashed that he stomped on the mouse and cracked it into pieces. Then he felt so bad, he hid in the basement behind the boiler. When we finally found him, he’d fallen asleep there and wet his pants. He wasn’t giggling nervously then. That time, he just cried and cried until finally Mom and Dad put him to bed. I wonder if George might be in this family’s basement, too scared to say anything or get himself out.

  I have to ring their doorbell and ask. I have no choice. It’s my fault if he’s down there. I shouldn’t have gotten distracted talking to Lisa. I should have kept my eye on him.

  A woman comes to the door. She’s my mother’s age, but she’s got blond hair and she’s more dressed up than my mother ever gets. She’s wearing pearls and a light-blue sweater.

  “Yes?” she says.

  Behind her, I hear a weird sound. Maybe the TV is on because it sounds like someone crying. I can tell the woman is surprised to see the door open. She looks at me funny like maybe I opened it.

  “I’m sorry to disturb you,” I say. Something about this woman is scary. My voice is shaking. “I’ve lost my brother and I noticed your door open. Sometimes he walks inside a house if a door is open.”

  She makes a face like someone should teach my brother better manners. “How old is he?” she says.

  I can tell she expects me to say three or maybe four. “Twelve,” I say. “But he’s autistic. I’m so sorry.”

  She steps out on the porch. “And you think he might be inside our house?”

  “I’m so sorry. I should have kept a better eye on him. It’s my fault.”

  “You know kids shouldn’t walk into other people’s houses.”

  “Yes, I know.”

  “I don’t care what he’s got, someone better teach him that.”

  I’m surprised by how mean she sounds. Usually when you tell people George is autistic, they at least pretend to be understanding.

  “I know,” I say. “We’re trying.”

  “If he walks into someone’s house, they could think he was a burglar and shoot him. It’s allowed, you know.”

  I wish I could disappear. “He’s never done it before. It’s possible he’s not in your house at all.” I sound stupid. We’re George’s family, which means we know him best, but if you don’t have autism, it’s impossible to understand the way George thinks.

  I wish this woman would be more understanding. I’m a kid who made a mistake. If she’d let me in her house, I could look around for two minutes and see if George is here. It wouldn’t take me long. I could guess where he might hide. I think about asking her if I can just look around her basement for two minutes, then I’d be done and she wouldn’t have to worry about me or my brother anymore.

  But before I ask, I see a surprise: Lisa is standing behind her. Apparently, this is her porch I’m standing on. And her mean mother I’m talking to.

  “What are you doing here?” Lisa says, not very nice.

  “I’m still looking for George. I can’t find him.” I can’t help it. My voice is back to shaking. Maybe I just want her to understand it’s a little bit her fault, too. She was standing there when he walked away from us. If she hadn’t distracted me, I would have seen which street he went up at least.

  “He’s back at your house. I just talked to Martin. They’re wondering where you are.”

  She stares at me funny, like she can’t believe I don’t know this, but how was I supposed to know it if I’ve spent the last half hour running around looking for him?

  “Did you tell them what I was doing?”

  “No. I wasn’t thinking about it because Martin and I just broke up for good. We’re not speaking anymore so I couldn’t call him back and tell him.” She takes a deep breath and shuts her eyes, like she’s trying not to cry. “That’s all, Benny. I sort of forgot abou
t you. Sorry.”

  She says it so fast, I can’t believe her mother doesn’t make her apologize again, only this time sound like she means it, please.

  But she doesn’t.

  Instead they look at each other like maybe her mother has just been saying, Martin’s family is strange. I don’t think you should get involved with any of them.

  I don’t know what I’m waiting for except maybe to have someone say something nice.

  No one does.

  SIXTEEN

  BACK AT HOME, MARTIN IS AT the kitchen counter, telling our mother what Lisa said to him. “She says she feels sorry for any girl I marry if I ever get it together enough to marry anyone.”

  Mom can’t help but smile. “Does she remember that you’re only in the ninth grade?”

  “I think so. I’m not sure. It’s possible she forgot.”

  An hour ago, I would have been furious at Martin for making fun of Lisa, who apparently I loved more than he ever did. Now I’m sort of grateful. When they see me, Mom holds out her arms. “There you are! We couldn’t figure out what happened to you.”

  I tell them I thought I’d lost George. Then I tell them the whole story of running into Lisa and what her mother said to me.

  “Her mother is a piece of work,” Martin says. “She gets dressed up and puts on makeup to go to the grocery store.”

  Our mother is a landscape designer, which means she goes to other people’s gardens and digs around in their dirt. Usually she’ll wash her hands before she goes to the grocery store, but sometimes she forgets even that and shops with mud in her fingernails. She might be messier than Lisa’s mother, but if a kid came to her door saying he’d lost his brother, our mother wouldn’t stand there asking him questions. She’d turn around and say, Let’s find this kid.

  Then George walks in, talking to his hand. I’m so grateful to see him, I go over and hug him. “You should have told me you were going home, George,” I say. “You made me run all around like a chicken with no head, looking for you.”

  George laughs and bounces up and down. He loves that expression—a chicken with no head. Then he sees Martin and his whole face changes, like a cloud has blown in. “No more Lisa Lowes,” he says. “That’s it!”

  Recently George has started doing something a little different. He doesn’t repeat exactly what you say but something you could have said. Or thought about saying. I think it means George understands a little more than we think. We all watch him as he paces back and forth, finishing his monologue.

  “I said that’s it, Lisa Lowes! No more! I’m going home! Bye-bye!”

  I don’t think he realizes we’re listening.

  “George,” Mom says. “It’s okay. Benny’s home now. Everything’s fine.”

  And then it occurs to me—he isn’t repeating anything either Martin or I said. He remembers Lisa Lowes. He said her name first when we ran into her today. He’s noticed pretty girls all his life, but this year he’s noticed them a lot more. He’ll sit close to one in assembly and try to touch her sleeve. Or he’ll lean over, close his eyes, and sniff her hair. If I’m nearby, I’ll say, “George!” and he knows to back away. He knows he shouldn’t get too close to pretty girls, but he can’t help it sometimes. The sparkly things they wear, the way they smell.

  Usually it’s so hard to imagine what George is thinking about that it never occurs to me—maybe he’s thinking about the same things we are. Maybe he was a little in love with Lisa Lowes, too. Maybe we all were, for a while anyway.

  Mom must be thinking the same thing I am. “Oh, Georgie,” she says. She puts one arm around me and holds the other one out for George to flutter into. “Did you like Lisa?” she whispers into the top of his head.

  “Don’t know!” he says.

  “I did!” I say, because I’m hoping pretty soon we can make this a joke. “I liked her so much I tried to read Little House on the Prairie.”

  “Wow,” Martin says, shaking his head. “How did that go?”

  “Not great. I kept waiting for the locusts to come in but they never did. The part I read was all bread baking and laundry and stuff like that.”

  “Right.” Mom sighs. “If only there were more locust plagues in our lives. Then things would be more interesting.”

  George has wiggled away and gone over to the sofa, where Dad is sitting watching all this. I look over in his direction, hoping he doesn’t ruin the moment by suggesting bike riding at the track again. I haven’t told Mom about him saying this. It’s too sad, especially when he seems so much better sometimes. Then I look at George, bent over right in front of Dad, like he’s trying to smell his breath.

  “George?” I say. “What are you doing?”

  He backs away and I see: Dad’s face is empty. His eyes are open, but something is wrong. He’s not blinking or moving.

  “Brian?” Mom says, moving closer. Then she screams, “Brian!” Just touching him is enough for her to know. “Call nine one one,” she says.

  I wonder how long Dad has been sitting here like this, before George looked over and saw what the rest of us didn’t.

  SEVENTEEN

  I DON’T WANT TO TALK TO ANYONE at school. I especially don’t want to talk to Jeremy, who says, first thing when he sees me the next morning, “Did you see I got another footprint?”

  “I don’t care about stupid footprints,” I say so loud that the girls at the other table look over. I don’t care. I only came to school this morning because Mom made me. She said I had to come and look after George.

  Martin is with her at the hospital, which is where I want to be, too, but she couldn’t deal with George all day at the hospital. He had to come to school, so she asked me to please come to school with him.

  On the bus, George laughed like he always does, because he might have been the first one to notice something was happening with Dad, but he doesn’t understand what it means.

  I don’t want to tell anyone at school. I don’t want to talk about how an ambulance came last night just like last time, only this time felt different. Mom didn’t look at us at all or worry about what we’d do if she left us alone. This time she looked only at Dad and held his hand the whole time they were putting him on the stretcher and taking him.

  She climbed inside the ambulance and told Martin, “I’ll call you when we get there.”

  By the time she finally called, we were up in bed. Martin said we could all sleep in George’s room the way we do on Christmas Eve. He brought in the blow-up mattress and lay on it, with all his clothes on, saying it was probably a good thing that Mom hadn’t called. I knew that wasn’t true of course.

  When she finally called, she told us that Dad was still alive, which was the good news. The bad news was that he’d had another brain bleed and he was going to need another surgery. The doctors told her he still might die but there was an equal chance that he wouldn’t. We should stay positive, she said. She promised she’d come home and be there in the morning.

  All day at school I think about Dad’s scar and the hair that has finally started to grow around it. Every day I’ve been watching his hair get a little bit longer, hoping that if he looks more like his old self maybe he’ll start to be his old self, too. Now when he wakes up from this surgery—if he wakes up from this surgery—we’ll be back at the beginning again. He’ll probably have a new bumpy scar somewhere on his head and he’ll shout things no one understands because brain surgeries make you paranoid and mad.

  If he wakes up. Last time, we didn’t worry about him dying. He was fine after the accident on the track, walking around and talking. How do you die if you were fine ten minutes before? After we hung up last night, I got mad that Mom told us how bad this could be. Martin said it was better to know. “She wants us to be ready for whatever happens, that’s all.”

  Be ready for Dad dying? How does anyone get ready for that?

  Certainly George doesn’t bother trying. On the bus ride here, he did the same thing he always does, which is sit behind Taro, t
he driver, because he likes watching him work the gearshift and the pedals. When we walked into school, I knew Ms. Bartholomew, the art teacher, didn’t know anything because she smiled big at George and said, “Who’s going to have a good day today?” I hate when teachers treat George like he’s in kindergarten but he obviously doesn’t mind so most of them do. “I am!” he said, giving her a high five and laughing.

  I wanted to tell Ms. Bartholomew that George will not have a good day. Neither of us will, maybe for the rest of the year. Or even the rest of our lives.

  “You want to know how I got my footprint?” Jeremy whispers. “’Cause it was easy. It was so easy it was stupid.”

  “I don’t want to know,” I say. I put my face in my hands. I’m afraid I might start to cry.

  “What you do is, you go into the office and you ask Ms. Champoux if she’d like a refill on her coffee. That’s it. A little milk and one sugar and, bam, I got us another footprint.”

  He likes pretending he’s doing this for the class, not himself, which is one more irritating thing about Jeremy.

  Then it’s strange. It seems like Mr. Norris is having as bad a day as I am. He’s forgotten everything—including our spelling tests—at home. “I even forgot my lunch,” he says, shaking his head when he looks at the empty lunch box he accidentally brought.

  I know that Mr. Norris’s bad day doesn’t have to do with me. This morning, Martin asked me what we should tell the school, and I said we should wait until we know what’s going to happen to Dad. I didn’t want everyone looking at me with hopeful expressions on their faces, like they wanted to say, Fingers crossed! Let’s hope he lives! So Mr. Norris can’t be thinking about me when he breaks a pencil during math time, and later when he closes a desk drawer on his finger so badly he asks Amelia to get him a cup of ice from the nurse.

  He’s tired and he’s thinking about his own problems. That’s why I haven’t gotten any footprints. I wish I could write him an anonymous note with my mother’s favorite tip: When bad things happen, think about someone else’s problems and try to help them.