Just My Luck

by Cammie McGovern

  By this, I would mean: he should think about me! He should think about how I’ve been a nice kid all year and now that my dad might be dying, he should sit down with a big stack of footprints and write up a bunch with my name on them. Maybe that would help him feel better.

  By the end of the day, I know that’s a stupid idea. Mom said she’d call the school if there was any big news, which she hasn’t done, so I have to assume that at least there isn’t bad news.

  I should feel relieved, but instead I feel mad. What if every day is like this for the rest of the year—where I spend the whole time wondering if I’ll be a half orphan when I go home? It’s not Dad’s fault, I know, but I hate him for not being able to fix it like he used to fix everything around the house.

  I hate him for not acting like himself for so long—for sounding like a kid or a strange, angry drunk person sometimes. I hate him for getting all our hopes up and seeming better and then getting a brain bleed again. It’s the one thing I’ve learned in fourth grade so far: there’s nothing I should count on being happy about. I was so happy when I got Mr. Norris, who was fun for a while, until he got so distracted and wasn’t fun anymore. Then I was happy when I found out I hadn’t lost George and we were all home with Dad, laughing about Lisa.

  And now this.

  I definitely have to get better at not counting on anything, I think.

  I can’t help myself—I’m so scared to go home, I start crying a little bit when I get on the bus in the afternoon. I slouch down in my seat so my backpack rides up and no one can see what’s happening with my eyes. That’s when I look up and notice the front seat behind Sue, our afternoon bus driver, is empty. The bus ahead of us is leaving and she’s pulling the door shut.

  I grab my backpack and start up to the front of the bus.

  “Wait!” I say. Usually, an aide or one of the assistant principals stands with George until he gets on the bus, but they don’t always keep perfect track of him because usually they don’t have to. George loves riding the bus. He knows our bus number and our driver. He’s never made a mistake about this. Usually he’s the first person on.

  “I need to get off,” I say.

  Sue gives me a tired look in her mirror. She’s not as nice as Taro, our morning driver. “I forgot something,” I say, because I see George on the far side of the playing fields, wearing his backpack. He’s near the bushes where soccer balls get lost sometimes, but George doesn’t care about soccer balls. I have no idea what he’s doing over there. “I can’t wait for you,” Sue says. “All the buses are pulling out.”

  “I know,” I say. George is too far away for me to tell what he’s doing, but I have a terrible feeling I know what happened. Mom called the school in the last hours to tell them Dad is dead. They told George but not me because maybe Mr. Norris didn’t answer a page. George knows and ran away to cry in the bushes. Somehow he got away, because suddenly he’s better at sneaking off. I should know. He did it to me yesterday.

  “It’s fine if you leave without me,” I tell Sue. I’m scared if she doesn’t open the door and let me off, I’ll start to really cry. “Just let me off,” I say. “Please.”

  I catch one break at least. I get off the bus just as a late class of third graders comes out of the building. Mr. Wilder, the principal, is too busy shuffling kids onto their buses to notice me running away from mine. I run as fast as I can across the field to George, but it’s hard, running and crying at the same time. My heart is beating and I’m afraid of what I’ll hear when I get to him: Dad’s dead! No more Dad!

  I hate this. I hate Mom for making us come to school today. I hate Dad for getting sick. I hate Martin for being at the hospital, where we should all be right now.

  By the time I get to George, I’m a mess and I almost can’t believe it. George isn’t crying, he’s laughing and pointing at a hole in the bushes. He’s rocking back and forth, flapping his hands a little. “It’s Mr. Norris’s path! Mr. Norris says, Bye, George.”

  He’s right. It’s the shortcut path to Mr. Norris’s apartment building. The one he used to use every morning until he started driving his beat-up car to work. George remembers weird things like this. Maybe he even notices that it’s been weeks since he’s seen Mr. Norris walk through these bushes, carrying a cookie sheet full of snacks for the class. Maybe this is his way of asking what’s going on. Who knows with George, but for the moment I’m so relieved he’s not telling me Dad is dead that I laugh and look where he’s pointing his stick. Just beyond the bushes is the path that dips down into a drainpipe and comes up again in the back of a parking lot for the apartment complex. Because it’s still the middle of the day, there aren’t too many cars in the lot.

  Then I see a real surprise: Mr. Norris’s car pulls into the parking lot. George recognizes it, too. He bounces up and down and squeals a little in excitement. “Shh, George,” I say. “We’re just going to watch.”

  In the distance, I see the last three buses close their doors and pull away. Now we’ll have to go to the office and call home for a ride. Maybe somewhere in the back of my mind, I’m thinking: the longer we put off going home, the longer we won’t have to hear any bad news about Dad. I push George ahead of me so we’re on the path, hidden by the bushes, and no one will look over here and wonder what we’re doing.

  EIGHTEEN

  I’M NOT SURE WHY IT’S NEVER occurred to me to spy on Mr. Norris and figure out the reason he’s changed so much recently. He’s right here. It would have been so easy. Maybe he’s working another job on the side. Maybe he’s not doing anything except playing video games all the time. Maybe Mom is right and video games really do rot your brain and make you forget things.

  It’s hard for George to be quiet. He has to make sounds even if I’ve told him to be quiet. He can’t really help himself.

  “Shh,” I say. “We can’t let him see us. We’re just looking, George, okay?”

  We watch Mr. Norris get out of his car. He walks around to the back and opens the trunk to pull out a box. I can feel George about to explode beside me. He wants to scream, Hi, Mr. Norris! Or We’re over here! He’s terrible at hide-and-seek because he always wants to be found. I squeeze his elbow and whisper, “You have to be quiet, George.”

  I’m not even sure what I’m hoping to see or why spying on Mr. Norris seems like a good way to forget our other problems. I try to figure out what’s in the box. It looks lightweight, like maybe it’s got clothes. Then there’s another surprise: Mr. Norris opens the back door of the car. Whoever’s in there must be a kid, but Mr. Norris doesn’t have children. Or at least not any that he’s mentioned to us.

  The person who gets out doesn’t seem like a kid at first. He’s as tall as Mr. Norris and wears a sweatshirt with the hood up so we can’t see his face. His clothes are kind of messy, and his elastic-waist pants are twisted to one side. Everything about him is a little off. He’s got the start of a mustache and a candy necklace. Then I put together a few clues: he’s wearing Velcro-strap shoes like George’s, plus he’s standing on his toes and fidgeting with a rubber-band bracelet in his hand.

  George can’t take the excitement of all this: seeing Mr. Norris with someone who reminds him of himself. “What are you doing in the bushes?” he shouts.

  I try to put my hand over his mouth, but I’m too late. It’s what he wants Mr. Norris to say. Like this is all a game, and pretty soon we’ll be laughing.

  “Who’s over there?” Mr. Norris squints in our direction. “Benny, is that you?”

  I don’t have any choice now. I have to stand up because George is out of the bushes, bouncing around. “I’m sorry, Mr. Norris,” I say, standing up from my hiding spot. “I had to come over here to get George. He didn’t get on the bus today—he came over here instead. I don’t know why.”

  “Yeah, I talked to him at recess today. He asked if he could come over after school.”

  He did? George is always capable of surprising us, but this really surprises me. “Why?”

&n
bsp; “I don’t know. I told him it wasn’t a good idea,” he says loudly. “Didn’t I, George?”

  George ignores him and bounces over to the trash Dumpster.

  “He shouldn’t have done this, Mr. Norris. I’m sorry. I’ll take him back to school and we’ll call home for a ride.”

  “No, Benny. Why don’t you come to my apartment and we’ll call your folks from there.” I can tell by the way he says “folks” that he doesn’t know my dad is back in the hospital. I follow him back toward the car. “I can also introduce you to my son, Aaron.”

  My voice is almost a whisper now. “I didn’t know you had a son.”

  “Usually he lives with his mother during the week and stays with me on weekends, but a few weeks ago his grandmother had a stroke. Aaron’s mom had to go to Arizona to take care of her so Aaron’s been with me full-time.”

  I think about the changes I’ve noticed and the clues I’ve been trying to piece together.

  “Aaron doesn’t do well with changes to his routine. Two weeks ago, he bit a girl on his van. Badly enough that he’s not allowed to ride on it for a while. I’ve had to drive him to school myself and pick him up, which is why I’ve been late to class a few times.” We’re standing away from Aaron, where he can’t hear us.

  This explains a lot of things—why he’s been distracted and tired. Why So B. It made him sad. We start walking toward his apartment.

  “Aaron’s not as high functioning as George. He can only say a few words and sometimes he can be aggressive. Because of that, he has to go to a special school.”

  “Oh.” I nod. “Okay.”

  I’ve never thought of George as being higher functioning than anyone else. There are so many things George can’t do: tie his shoes. Cut his pancakes. Zip his jacket. Once, I tried to help him with his math homework, which was measurements. He never got the idea that you have to line up one end of the ruler with one end of the thing. He just waved the ruler around and said everything was three inches because George likes to get homework done as quickly as possible so he can watch his videos on YouTube.

  When I told Mom that I didn’t think he’d really gotten the idea of measuring, she said, “It’s okay, honey. I don’t think he ever will.” That made me sad. Like George might never change. When I told Mom later, she said it was okay to feel sad for a little while but we shouldn’t stay sad for too long because George was mostly happy and part of being George’s family is just accepting him. I wonder how hard that is with someone who bites girls on vans.

  “You know, Benny, I was surprised when you said I never noticed you at school. I watch you with your brother all the time. It always makes me wish Aaron had a little brother who would talk to him on the playground and be friends with him. I sometimes wonder if he’d be different if he had that.” I can tell this conversation is making Mr. Norris sad. “That’s probably why I haven’t given you a footprint. Because I don’t think one little sentence could describe all that I see you do for him.”

  Now I’m really worried that he might start crying, so I turn away and look at George, who has found some gravel to dribble on the other side of the Dumpster.

  Aaron stands near his apartment door, eating his candy necklace.

  “I probably should have told you all this, I know. My ex-wife never wanted us to talk about Aaron’s diagnosis with people outside the family. She thought unpleasant subjects shouldn’t be discussed. I suppose I’m used to thinking that way. I knew you were coming into my class this year and I know George, of course. I thought about saying something the first day when we all introduced ourselves, and then I wondered about all the students I’d had before who I never talked about Aaron with. I worried that it would make them feel like they hadn’t really known me.”

  I think of Lisa. Even though I don’t like her anymore, I think of how important he still is to her, four years after she left his class. How surprised she’d be if I told her.

  “You’ve taught me something this year, Benny. You might not even realize it.”

  Whatever it is, he’s right. I don’t realize.

  “I’ve figured out that having something big that you don’t talk about adds a lot of stress to your life. It made me feel like I was keeping a secret and I would have been better off from the start telling the truth to the whole class. That I have a pretty disabled son temporarily living with me during the week. You all would have understood, I’m sure. And maybe it would have made you feel a little less lonely, right, Benny?”

  “Yeah,” I whisper. I almost say, I’ve been keeping a secret, too. I want to tell him: My dad’s back in the hospital again. We’re here because we’re scared to go home and find out what’s happening.

  I can’t get the words out, though.

  I’m crying and nothing will come out of my mouth. He comes over and hugs me, which makes George start laughing nervously. “You’re a strong kid, Benny,” he says. “Stronger than you probably realize.”

  I manage to stop crying and wipe my face. “Thanks, Mr. Norris.”

  It’s strange to get inside his apartment and see everything about Mr. Norris’s life up close. Like unwashed cereal bowls in the sink. And books folded open on the sofa. It looks nothing like I imagined it would—full of video games and toys. By the look of it, he’s like my parents, who are a little messy and read a lot.

  Mr. Norris tells us to sit down on the sofa, while he looks for the phone, because it isn’t in the cradle where it should be. “It never is,” he says, laughing a little. “I’d blame Aaron except that he doesn’t use the phone.”

  I can tell he’s trying to joke with someone who will understand, which I do. George has never made a phone call in his life.

  “I’ll call the school, so they can call your folks and see about getting a ride for you.”

  Mr. Norris goes to use the phone in the bedroom, leaving me alone with Aaron, who looks very nervous, and George, who won’t sit down no matter how many times I tell him to. Any time George is in an unfamiliar place, he always looks around in ways that aren’t polite. He likes opening doors and cupboards. Sometimes he’ll open refrigerators and look in people’s Tupperware. Once he starts doing it, it’s impossible to stop him. If you try, he’ll start crying or screaming really loud, so I don’t bother until I look over at Aaron and see how nervous George is making him. I wish I had a magic trigger I could pull that would stop George in his tracks.

  Aaron stands by the front door with his fingers in his ears.

  When George opens the bathroom door and goes inside to test the echo of his singing voice, Aaron starts moving around the edge of the room, making a high-pitched squeaking sound, getting more and more nervous.

  “George, you need to get out of there,” I say. “Come out here and sit next to me.”

  “No thank you!”

  “Please, George. I’ll brush my teeth with my finger!”

  “No thank you!”

  George laughs like he thinks it’s funny that Aaron is so scared of him. Dad used to say that George likes seeing other autistic kids because he gets ideas for new stims from them. Stims are the things autistic kids do over and over for no reason, like bouncing and flapping their hands, which is George’s favorite. But if he’s around other autistic kids, he’ll borrow new stims for a while. He’ll squeak or roll his eyes backward or wiggle his fingers in his peripheral vision. All of them make him look pretty weird.

  Now I’m pretty sure George will get home and circle our living room with his fingers in his ears because he’s spent the last ten minutes watching Aaron do it. Aaron’s up on his toes now, like if we don’t leave soon he might explode. He starts making a high-pitched whine that maybe only I can hear, because Mr. Norris doesn’t come running.

  George hears it, too, and laughs more. Then he makes everything ten times worse by following Aaron around in his frantic living room circle.

  “George, stop it right now!” I scream.

  He doesn’t stop.

  “I’ll tell Mom to take
away your screen!”

  He still doesn’t stop and Mr. Norris doesn’t come back.

  I don’t know what to do. And then I notice a book, lying on the floor next to the coffee table: The Night Before Christmas. I can’t believe it’s out already. For the rest of the world, it isn’t Halloween yet, but in autism world, I guess, it’s Christmas all year round. This one is George’s favorite, mostly because it stars George’s favorite person, Santa. “George, look!” I say. “It’s The Night Before Christmas!”

  George stops following Aaron and comes over to the sofa. I’m grateful to have stopped him, but I’m not sure if it will last. “Read it, Benny,” he says, bending close so he can look at the pictures from an inch away.

  “You have to sit down first,” I say.

  He doesn’t sit.

  “Read it!”

  “Not until you sit down.”

  He does. I open the book and put my arm through his so he won’t get back up. I start to read: “‘’Twas the night before Christmas when all through the house not a creature was stirring, not even a . . .’” I wait. This is an old game Dad used to play. “A camel?”

  “Mouse!” they both shout.

  I can’t believe it. Aaron is still circling the room, but he said it, too. He talked.

  Dad used to do this when George made him read the same Dr. Seuss books over and over. He’d change a few words to pretty funny things that made us all laugh. Now it makes me feel great. I got Aaron to speak!

  I keep going. “‘Mama in her kerchief, and I in my cap, had just settled for a long winter’s’ . . . cup of cocoa.”

  “Nap!” they both shout.

  George bounces next to me on the sofa. At least he’s not scaring Aaron anymore, though it’s hard to tell if Aaron is enjoying this game or if it’s making him more nervous to hear this poem wrong. I keep going for a while, saying some lines right and some wrong. And then I look behind me and see Mr. Norris standing there, watching us and holding the phone.