Things You Can't Say

by Jenn Bishop

  I wish he would speed up or fall back behind, but it’s like the dude can’t take a hint. Maybe I need to ask him the right prying question. Something to get him off my back.

  “Do you have kids?” I ask. “Or a wife? Or a husband?” I add quickly, covering all the bases. You never know.

  “Drew, that’s enough.” Mom’s holding a big stick, and while she’s only holding it because of Xan, I decide to knock it off for now. We’ve still got a ways to go till we finish the loop.

  “No, no, that’s okay. It’s all right to be curious,” Phil says. “I’m not married, but I’d like to have a family someday. Be a father.” He glances ahead at Mom for a second, but she’s not looking back at him. She’s making sure Xan doesn’t run too fast with two sticks in his hands.

  For a bit there, Phil goes quiet until Xan makes him carry a few sticks because he’s trying to decide which is his favorite. I try to pull out my cell phone and play a game, but Mom notices and makes me put it away.

  The funny thing is, for the whole loop, even though it’s the four of us, it feels like Phil keeps trying to talk to me more than anyone else. Maybe he thinks it’s a challenge. I’m the one person who doesn’t want to be his pal, so he’s going to keep at it, relentlessly, until I change my mind.

  Unless it’s something else.

  * * *

  After spending the night tossing and turning, I lie awake as the sun comes up. Between the curry Phil made for dinner and all that weirdness with Filipe, it was impossible to sleep.

  Sure, he and Theo are on the soccer team together and the whole team went to camp last week for some kind of team-building thing. But Theo is older. He doesn’t even go to the same school as us. And I heard a rumor that he goes to parties with high schoolers. So why does he suddenly want to hang out with Filipe? Since when did Filipe become cool enough to hang out with Theo?

  It doesn’t make sense. None of it does. Not one part of this summer.

  At least I don’t have to worry about Audrey anymore.

  I’m lying facedown on my pillow when I hear that sound again. Not the birds chirping. And not the sound of a motorcycle either. That unmistakable squeak of the sliding glass door opening. And then the clapping. The feet clomping on the ground.

  I pull the pillow around my ears to block out the sound—the reminder of Phil’s existence in our house—except it doesn’t work. There’s a part of me—my inner brain or whatever—that won’t shut up. That needs to know why he’s doing it.

  My alarm clock reads 5:35. Mom is still asleep in her bedroom—will be for at least another hour. I tiptoe by Xan’s room, where the door is ajar. His arms are hanging off the side of the bed, his face planted into a pillow. Typical Xan.

  Downstairs, I pull open the sliding glass door that leads out to the back patio.

  There he is, except he isn’t doing jumping jacks anymore. I don’t know what to call what he’s doing except being a weirdo. His feet turn in and out as he jumps side to side. His arms are up in the air, flailing. If it weren’t for the fact that he’s like, six-two and in pretty good shape, I’d say he could be mistaken for someone in a senior-citizen aerobics class at the Y.

  I step off the patio and onto the dewy grass and clear my throat.

  He keeps doing it.

  I clear my throat again, this time louder. “Eh. Hem.”

  Nothing! He’s either in the zone or doing his very best job of ignoring me.

  “What are you doing?”

  This time he stops. Feet flat on the ground. He tamped down that whole area of grass with his jumping.

  He wears a big stupid grin on his face. “Hey, Drew.”

  “What are you doing?” I ask again, scratching a bug bite on my elbow.

  “Do you want to give it a try?”

  I shake my head. “Not really. Can you just … I mean, what are you even doing? And why do you have to do it? Every. Single. Morning?” Okay, two mornings in a row. But still. Clearly there’s a pattern here.

  “Whew! One question at a time, buddy. And while you’re at it, can you let a man catch his breath?” He smiles again.

  I do not smile back.

  “I’m trying to think of the best way to explain it, but I think that’s just it. You can’t completely explain it. You need to try it to see.”

  “No thanks.”

  Phil stares at me, still catching his breath.

  “You know, you look like a weirdo when you do it.” I imagine Filipe—or worse, Theo—catching me out here, jumping around in my pajamas with Phil, and what they’d say.

  Phil laughs. “I’ll bet. You know what—that’s why I do it now, in the wee hours of the morning before anyone’s awake. No one can see me. Well, except …” He gestures to me.

  Does he know I watched yesterday?

  “I’ll close my eyes. Heck, I’ll turn around. No one’s watching you,” he says. “Promise.”

  There’s something about the way he looks at me, almost like how the kids stare up at me right before I begin a puppet show. And for some reason, this time I can’t say no.

  “Fine,” I say. “But you have to turn around.”

  He does. “You gotta get warmed up first. Try hopping a little bit. Keep your feet just an inch or so off the ground. I’ll do it too.”

  I do what he says. I hop. Once and then again, my feet barely clearing the grass. I feel stupid, and I swear someone is watching us, but I peek for a second, and the backyard is as empty as it was when I came out. Next thing I know, we’re going higher, higher and higher until we’re no longer hopping but full-on jumping. Our arms, waving in the air. Our ankles, turning in and out, in and out.

  My feet hop left and right, left and right. My heart thumps loudly in my chest as the ground seems to shake beneath my feet. And soon that’s all I can hear. The thumping on the ground, the pounding of my heart. My breath.

  “Feels good, huh?” Phil asks.

  I’m totally panting now. Maybe? All I know for sure is I definitely don’t feel as much like an idiot as I thought I would at the start. “I guess?”

  “Okay, we’ll keep going for another couple minutes.”

  It’s like I can actually feel the blood pumping through my body. Out from my heart and into my lungs, my arms and legs, my head, my feet, my stomach.

  “Aaaand stop.”

  My heels hit the ground.

  “Turn your palms out.”

  The slightest breeze tickles my upturned palms.

  “And breathe.”

  My whole body feels tingly now that I’ve stopped moving. I don’t even mean to, but I smile.

  “Pretty amazing, huh?”

  I’m not ready to give Phil the satisfaction he’s looking for. “It feels all right.”

  Finally I turn and face Phil.

  “So,” Phil says, “you asked me why I do it.”

  “And?”

  “I do it every morning because … well, because as you can probably see, it makes me feel alive. For a few moments, I like feeling my whole glorious body working for me. It’s an amazing thing, life, and I don’t want to ever forget.”

  The smile on my face is gone. I chew on the inside of my cheek. What’s he trying to say? That I don’t think life is amazing? That if I don’t jump outside in my pajamas every morning like a weirdo, someday I’m going to do what Dad did?

  He has no right—none at all—to come into our house and act like he knows everything. What does he think he’s doing, anyway, coming all the way out here from Colorado? Does he think he’s got some magical solution to fix my family? Fix me? That he’s got it all figured out? Because he doesn’t.

  My ears get hot, and before I can manage to say any of that to him, I’m darting across the patio and slamming the sliding glass door behind me. The glass rattles so hard I think for a second it might fall out of the door and shatter into a million pieces. It doesn’t, but it should.

  Maybe it’d wake Mom up, wake her up from all this. Phil in our house, taking Dad’s place for
a couple days? It doesn’t change what happened. Nothing ever will.

  But there’s something else rattling too.

  My heart, which was beating so hard for the past ten minutes, is now constricting. Banging around in there. The empty cage of my ribs.

  12

  NONE OF IT WAKES UP Mom, though. Instead I lie in my bed, my heart pounding for a few minutes, before I somehow fall asleep.

  The next thing I know, Mom is rubbing my shoulder. “Drew?”

  I pry my mouth off the pillow and wipe at some drool crusted around the corners of my mouth. Man, I must’ve really been out.

  “I let you sleep in, but we need to get out the door soon.”

  I glance at the clock. How is it already eight fifteen? I scramble out of bed, fumbling through my drawers for clean clothes.

  In her dress shoes, Mom tip-taps out of my room and down the hallway.

  Clean boxers, shirt, shorts, socks. I wet down the sticking-up parts of my hair in the bathroom and brush my teeth fast. And then I linger at the top of the stairs, the smells from the kitchen wafting up. Sausage and eggs. Hash browns?

  Did Phil tell Mom what happened earlier this morning? He must have. That’s the only explanation. The only reason she’d let me sleep in.

  I start down the stairs.

  Waiting for me at the edge of the kitchen counter is a brown paper bag. It doesn’t have my name on it, but I know it’s mine all the same. Phil is already putting the breakfast dishes into the dishwasher.

  “There’s a plate for you at the table.” Phil turns as he hears me enter the room. “Xan tipped me off about sausage and eggs being your favorite.”

  Mom looks at me. What am I supposed to do? Just gobble up this food because he made it for me?

  “I already brushed my teeth,” I say.

  Mom’s face falls.

  “And we need to go. Don’t you have a meeting this morning?”

  Mom claps her hand to her mouth. “Oh my gosh, you’re right, Drew. I completely forgot. Can you track down your brother and make sure he’s brushed his teeth before we head out the door? Don’t want him breathing sausage breath all over the Y staff.”

  As I try to convince Xan to turn off the TV and brush his teeth, I can hear Mom and Phil in the kitchen.

  “Who’s the parent, huh?” Mom laughs. “Sheesh. Almost late to the meeting I’m in charge of. Good grief.”

  “You’ve got a lot on your plate, Kay.”

  “A lot distracting me.” More laughter.

  I can’t get my brother up the stairs fast enough.

  * * *

  As I make my way down the back staircase to the children’s room, I’m still holding the brown paper lunch bag in my hand. I haven’t opened it to see what’s inside. Not that it matters. Whatever’s in there, it’s not headed for my stomach. I’d rather go hungry.

  The children’s room is empty. Mrs. Eisenberg is in the meeting upstairs with all the other librarians. I crunch the brown paper bag in my hand, squishing the sandwich and whatever else is inside, and chuck it into the metal garbage can in the corner of the room. Clang.

  A gasp.

  “Audrey?” I say.

  She stands up from a beanbag chair over by the fiction section and pulls out her earbuds.

  “I didn’t realize anyone else was down here.” I chew on my lip.

  “What was that noise?”

  I glance at the trash can. “Just throwing something away.”

  “Was it alive?”

  “Huh?”

  Audrey huffs as she walks toward me, her earbuds swinging from her hand. “All I’m saying is, that’s an awful lot of noise to make just throwing something in the garbage.”

  I shrug.

  “Are you okay?” Audrey waits for an answer.

  In the back of the room, that stupid light above the aquarium is buzzing again. You’d think I would like the quiet. The space from Phil. But it’s like no matter where I go, he comes with me anyway.

  “I’m fine!” I say, grabbing the cutting project from yesterday and slamming it down on the table.

  Audrey tucks some hair behind her ears. I guess maybe I could’ve said it a little more like a person who was actually fine.

  She sits down in the chair across from me. I can already tell she’s one of those people who sits on only part of the chair, like she’s waiting for a friend to fill up the other half, which is funny, because I wouldn’t have guessed someone like Audrey really has that many friends.

  “There’s this guy,” I say. “He’s staying with us for a little while.”

  “A guy? Like a teenager?”

  I shake my head. “Way older. Like forty.”

  Audrey tilts her head. “What about your dad?”

  I want to slam my head on the table. My dad. What I’d told Audrey two days ago. “He doesn’t live with us anymore.”

  Audrey considers this for a second. It’s not a lie, exactly. “So, this guy. What is it about him that makes you want to toss garbage into the trash can with a murderous rage?”

  “It wasn’t—”

  “Drew, people upstairs could hear that noise.”

  “Oh.”

  “Do you think this guy is having an affair with your mom?”

  “What? No.” Don’t those only happen on TV shows? When Filipe’s vovó used to babysit him, she was always watching soap operas where everyone was having affairs. My mom can’t have an affair, though. Not that I can explain that to Audrey. For her to have an affair, Dad would have to be alive.

  “It’s not that crazy of a question,” she says. “It happens all the time. At least, it does at universities. I overheard my mom and dad talking about one of their friends who was having one and—”

  “Audrey.”

  “What?”

  “I thought you wanted to help.”

  “Oh.”

  Why I ever thought that in the first place, I don’t know. I mean, this is Audrey. For all I know, her friends before me were cats. It wouldn’t be the most surprising thing.

  Wait, did I just call Audrey a friend?

  “So, the official reason he’s here is that he’s on this motorcycle trip across the country, right? But I’ve never even heard of him before. My mom said he’s her ‘old friend,’ but he’s definitely acting like he likes her. Helping around the house and stuff. Being all nice to Xan. Trying to be all nice to me, not that it’s working. It just seems fishy. Like, why? Why now? What’s he expecting to happen, you know?”

  “Okay, okay. So … what do you want? I mean, what would help with this guy—wait, what’s his name?”

  “Oh, get ready for it.”

  “One sec.” Audrey pulls a ChapStick out of her pocket and slathers it on her lips. I’m not sure what about this moment requires ChapStick, but okay. “I’m ready,” she says once she’s finished.

  “Phil … Pittman.”

  Audrey snorts.

  “Audrey!”

  “His name is really Phil Pittman?”

  “Really.”

  Audrey glances over at the bank of computers. “Did you look him up yet?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You know, google him. Figure out who you’re dealing with.”

  I shake my head. Why hadn’t I thought of googling him? That’s the kind of thing Filipe and I would’ve done right away any other summer.

  “What are we waiting for?”

  I check the clock. We still have another ten minutes until Mrs. Eisenberg will be back from her meeting. And the room is empty. And, okay, even if Mrs. Eisenberg does come down and we’re on the computer, it’s not like we’ll be in trouble. She’s not exactly paying us.

  Audrey jumps up and is on that thing before I’ve even answered. She sits on half of the chair like she’s expecting me to sit on the other half. Nuh-uh. I roll over another chair.

  She waves her fingers above the keyboard like a magician.

  “Audrey …”

  “Okay, Phil Pittman,” she says. �
��Show us your true self.”

  She types his name into the search bar and clicks the blue button.

  13

  FOUR HUNDRED NINETY-NINE THOUSAND.

  “Yikes,” I say.

  “That’s a whole lot of Pittmans.”

  “How are we ever going to find mine?” Mine. I shudder. “I mean, the real one.”

  “Easy peasy,” Audrey says. She sounds like my grandmother. Maybe her only real friends are grandmothers. “What else do you know about him?”

  “Um.”

  “Oh, come on. Like, where’s he from? Where’d he go to college? Has he ever been convicted of a felony?”

  She switches over to image search, and suddenly dozens of Phil Pittmans fill the screen. One with a legit wizard beard. One with wire glasses sort of like Dad’s. A mug shot. And another with scary face tattoos. Guess my mom could have invited a weirder Phil Pittman into our home.

  “Are any of these guys him?”

  “Nope.”

  “You really don’t know anything about him? Come on, Drew. I mean, how’d he get to your house? Did you see his license plate?”

  I did catch it the other day. Green with white mountains. Plus, he went to the same high school as Mom. “Colorado.”

  Audrey drops the mouse. “Wait—Colorado? What’s he doing all the way on the East Coast? Hmmmmm. Long bike trip. Far from home. What if there’s something he’s running away from?” Audrey’s eyebrows shoot up.

  Whoa. She’s onto something. I lean in. “This whole thing—it’s weird, right?”

  “Very.” She goes back to the search bar and enters Phil Pittman and Colorado.

  He isn’t the only Phil Pittman in Colorado, it turns out. But we’re getting closer. I can feel it. And Audrey must be feeling something too, because as she scrolls down the page, I can hear her breathing through her nose. Short, fast breaths, like how Filipe’s dog Tobey breathes when he’s having a nightmare.

  And then I see the headline: ONE MAN’S CROSS-COUNTRY MOTORCYCLE JOURNEY AND THE INSPIRATION BEHIND IT.

  “That’s him!”

  “Which one?” The cursor shoots across the page.