Things You Can't Say

by Jenn Bishop

  I wake up before my alarm the next day, and as I come out of that foggy haze, two things hit me.

  One: maybe my dad isn’t who I thought he was.

  And two: Phil’s gone. I scared him off.

  Sunlight slants through the edges of my shade, hitting the Star Wars: The Force Awakens poster over my bureau. It’s still quiet in the house. I flip over to check my alarm clock. Five thirty. Hours till I have to get up to go to the library. I slip out of bed, tiptoe over to my window, and lift up the shade.

  The grass that Phil and I tamped down yesterday morning is wet with dew, sparkling in the morning sunlight. But the backyard looks empty now, which is weird because, really, it looks the same as it did three mornings ago, never mind all the mornings before. It’s not like it always had a weirdo doing jumping jacks in it at the crack of dawn. I shake my head. Was one of those weirdos yesterday really me? Could that other weirdo have been my dad?

  I climb back into bed and shut my eyes. Flip onto my stomach. Turn the pillow onto the cool side. But none of it helps me get back to sleep.

  There’s this weird tingly feeling in my legs. And, okay, maybe my arms, too. Almost like I want to be outside, shaking it all out.

  But I don’t want to do that.

  That would be crazy.

  Right?

  Thing is, though, it’s actually one of the less crazy thoughts running through my brain the past twenty-four hours.

  Phil leaving was supposed to make everything go back to normal. But it doesn’t. And not just because I miss him. He was only here for a few days—but I do. The house feels quieter now that he’s left.

  I can’t let go of what I learned yesterday, about his brother being named Andrew too. Or what I overheard Mom say on the phone.

  It’s not proof, of course. I didn’t hear Mom’s whole conversation with Julia or what Julia said to Mom.

  That’s what I need, though. Proof. Something concrete that shows he’s my dad. Or that it’s at least not completely crazy to think he might be. I can’t go to Mom with less than that, or I’ll look …

  Fragile. Like how Dad supposedly was. Is that how people see me? Like if they say or do the wrong thing, I’ll break?

  Does Filipe ever think of me like that? Do other kids at school?

  I always thought they just felt bad for me. Bad in that way you can’t express with words. But maybe that’s not exactly it.

  Maybe the proof can come in the other direction too. Something irrefutable—I think that’s the word, at least—that proves I’m Dad’s son. That means my whole life hasn’t been a lie. And then everything can truly go back to normal. At least the normal that’s been my life for the past three years.

  And then Phil can go back to being a kind of strange guy with an even stranger favorite way to exercise who stayed at our house for a few days and then went on his way. Nothing more than that.

  I don’t know which one’s better. When Dad died, it rearranged my life completely. The past three years would’ve looked so different if he’d been around for them.

  In those days after Dad died, all I wanted was some way to hit undo. Exit without saving progress. If Phil is my real dad, maybe I can undo. The hugest kind of undo. Erase all progress. Reboot and start over.

  * * *

  The morning at the library rushes by in a blur of story hour, giggly five-year-olds, smelly diapers, puppets, name tags, juice spills, and a table that’s crusted over with glue no matter how many times Audrey and I wipe it down with a sponge. A happy distraction from thinking about Dad and Phil.

  “You know what,” Mrs. Eisenberg says, finally settling down into her chair at eleven forty-five a.m. as the last story-hour family gets on the elevator. “I think you two deserve a Del’s.”

  Just hearing that word makes my mouth water.

  “A Del’s?” Audrey asks.

  I almost fall out of my chair. “You’ve been in Rhode Island for how many weeks and you haven’t had a Del’s yet?”

  “I don’t know what it is,” she says. “Hence my question.”

  Hence? Okay, Audrey.

  “Well, then.” Mrs. Eisenberg chuckles. “Better show her, Drew. Can’t spend a summer in Rhode Island without having a Del’s or two … or three dozen.”

  “Okay, can someone just tell me what it is?”

  I catch Mrs. Eisenberg’s eye. Nah. It’s way too fun to give in now.

  “Nope,” she says, crossing her arms.

  Audrey scrunches her face, fully aware I’m not going to give in.

  “Come on!” I catch myself before grabbing her hand to help her out of her chair. That was close. Mrs. Eisenberg gives me a ten-dollar bill, and then I’m running for the door to the stairs. “You’re going to love it.”

  “Debatable,” Audrey says. Though she is following me, so that counts for something.

  We make our way up the stairs and through the main room of the library. Mom’s at the reference desk, but not with a patron right now. “Audrey and I are getting Del’s. Do you want one?”

  Mom’s thinking about it. “Um, maybe later, bud. Thanks for asking.”

  I try to see if there’s any hint of her crying last night, but she looks okay today. Normal.

  “You’re ridiculous, you know?” Audrey says as we step out into the sun. It’s got to be at least ninety degrees outside. You’re practically required to get a Del’s when it’s this hot. “I sure hope it’s not something gross, like … chocolate-covered opossum on a stick.”

  The Del’s truck is parked down the street a block. I lead us that way. “Wait a minute. I’m the ridiculous one? You just suggested a popular summertime treat in Rhode Island is chocolate-covered opossum.”

  “On a stick.” I think I catch her almost giggle.

  Turns out I’m not the only one thirsting after a Del’s, so Audrey and I get into the line. “Lots of people excited about chocolate-covered opossum today,” I say loud enough for the man in the black suit in front of us to raise an eyebrow.

  Finally it’s our turn. I step up to the truck. “Two mediums, please.”

  The man working the truck has a pretty sweet Mohawk. How long did it take him to get his hair that long? “Flavor?” he asks.

  “Oh, lemon,” I say. “Lemon for both.”

  “Hey, what if I don’t want a lemon one?” Audrey peeks inside the truck.

  “Trust me, you do. You can try the other flavors later, but cross my heart, you will go back to the lemon.”

  “Fiiiiine.”

  Mr. Mohawk trades us the two medium paper cups of freshly squeezed lemon-ice slushies for my ten dollars. I slip the change in my pocket, and Audrey and I walk over to some nearby benches in the shade.

  “So, what do you think?” I ask as she’s about to take her first slurp.

  “I wish you’d let me get a straw so I could eat this like a normal person.” She’s tipping her cup at a scary angle and I picture the whole thing sloshing down onto her face.

  “No!”

  Audrey startles.

  “Like this,” I explain, squishing my cup to create a little spout for sipping.

  “Oh,” she says, copying me. “Oh! This is good!”

  “Told you. See, not everything about Rhode Island is so bad.”

  “I never said that.” She stops for a sec and holds her cup. I wonder if the brain freeze is setting in.

  “Actually, you kind of did. That first day at the library.”

  “Yeah, well … I guess …” She takes another slurp. “Sometimes—very rarely—I am wrong about things. First impressions, you know?”

  I know a thing about first impressions, I think, imagining Phil when I first met him, motorcycle helmet in hand. “Yeah,” I say.

  A chunk of the slushie falls onto my wrist. As I go to lick it off, I remember how little Devin Ferrera’s hands were covered in glue earlier today and how Audrey super cautiously handed him a paper towel and wished him “Good luck with that mess” before running away from him.

&nb
sp; “Hey, Audrey?”

  “Yeah.”

  “How come you’re so nervous when it comes to the kids? Like, did something happen once that made you scared, or …”

  Audrey chews on the top of her cup for a second. “Maybe I wouldn’t be this way if I had a little brother or a sister, but I don’t. I guess I never figured out how to act around them. Plus, they’re basically tiny germ factories with their boogery noses, plus poop and pee and barf coming out all the time.”

  “All the time?” I can’t help it. I laugh. “There’s a big difference between a five-year-old and a newborn, Audrey.”

  She takes a sip of Del’s. “Plus … I don’t know. It’s not so easy getting them to like you. Sure, you’re a natural, but I swear, I tried to talk to a couple kids the other day after story hour and they stared back at me like I had an arm coming out of my head.”

  “Actually, if you did have an arm coming out of your head, I bet you’d be pretty popular with the kids from story hour. They love weird stuff like that.”

  “I guess I could try harder.… I mean, we’ve still got a few more weeks of July, plus all of August.”

  “How about this? If I see you doing a good job with the kids, I’ll flash you a thumbs-up. And if it’s not going too hot, I’ll … um … I’ll have a coughing fit!”

  Audrey looks a little skeptical of my plan. “I guess it can’t hurt,” she says. “Sure.”

  We just sit there, letting the lemony goodness of Del’s soak in and cool us off. Something changed between me and Audrey the other day when we looked up the stuff about Phil. She didn’t hassle me about it the way Filipe would have. Maybe it’s because she doesn’t know everything about me the way he does. We don’t have so many years of shared history. I feel like I can trust her.

  “Hey, Audrey?”

  “Yeah.”

  I can’t believe I’m about to say this. I can’t. No. I shouldn’t. Agghhh.

  “You know how yesterday you said that thing about affairs?”

  “Yeah?”

  “I think …” I have to take another big slurp before I can say it out loud. “Maybe …”

  “I can’t understand you. Maybe you should swallow first before talking?”

  I swallow. “Sorry. Sometimes I do this thing where”—I slosh a bunch more Del’s into my mouth—“I need to eat to calm down.” I swallow again. “Oooh. Too much Del’s. Brain freeze.”

  “Okay, so all of what you just said? I understood about twenty percent of it.”

  “Right.” I glance around in case somehow Mom or one of her library friends is nearby. The coast is clear. I have no other excuse now. This is my chance to say it. “I think there’s a chance that Phil might be … my real dad.”

  I take another gulp of Del’s right after I say it. The chill from the Del’s has nothing on the relief that comes after saying the words out loud, finally, to someone. Phil is my real dad. The words ring in my ear. They don’t sound half as bad as I thought they would. Phil is my dad. My dad. Phil.

  Audrey’s face goes all serious, and then I get it. If Phil somehow really is my dad, it is serious. Big-time serious. Maybe I didn’t one hundred percent get that before, but I do now.

  She takes another sip, crunching the ice with her teeth. My dad hated when I crunched on ice. Said it was super bad for my teeth. My dad. “Wait, though,” Audrey says. “But why, why do you think he is? Phil, I mean.”

  “Remember that article you found yesterday, how it mentioned his dead brother, Andrew? I’m Andrew. I mean, Drew is short for Andrew. And he knew my mom, knew her before my dad. At first I thought it was just a crush, but maybe that isn’t it. Maybe they dated in high school and never told my dad. Plus, he acted all weird the first time I met him. Ever since he came around, it seemed like he was trying to get to know me. Bond with me, you know? And earlier I heard him and my mom talking about how they had to tell me something, they just needed the right time. I didn’t put it all together until yesterday, but—there’s something going on here, Audrey. I know it. Some other reason he’s here—it’s not just what they said. I think it’s me.”

  Audrey chews on that for a minute before taking another slurp of her Del’s. “Okay, so … how would you prove it?”

  “That’s the thing. I don’t even know where to start.”

  “Well, you know there’s kits you can buy online, right? All you need is something with his DNA on it. A hair, or some spit.”

  “I don’t have the dude’s spit! And anyway, how much are those kits?”

  Audrey shakes her cup. “A couple hundred dollars? A thousand?”

  “I don’t have that kind of money. Plus, I don’t have his DNA. Not now, but …”

  “What?”

  “He left yesterday, but he’s coming back after he rides up through Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Vermont, and Maine.”

  “How long will that take?”

  I shrug.

  They’re so alike, it kills me. Did Mom mean we look alike, me and Phil? I can’t imagine it. Phil is so hairy. And so … grown-up-looking. But when he was younger, maybe? Did he … did he look like me then? Do I look like a younger Phil?

  Last year Filipe got this app for his phone that lets you do a face morph. You take a picture of yourself and morph it back into you as a baby, or morph it forward to you as an adult, or as an old person. Or as a girl if you’re a boy. The results were hilarious. Filipe made a hideous girl. It’s not an exact science, I guess. And of course Filipe kept having it morph his face with Tobey’s.

  If you morph me forward, would I look like Phil? If Phil got morphed backward, did you get me? Or something close?

  If I could just find a picture of Phil from when he was younger, I’d know. I’d know if it was possible, at least. If our faces were on some continuum of Phil-ness or Drew-ness. I’ve seen pictures of my dad from when he was little. He looked just like Xan, nothing like me.

  But where could I find a picture of Phil?

  Audrey slurps out the last bit of her Del’s. “Drew? What are you thinking?”

  “Hold on.” I start tearing at the soft, wet rim of my empty Del’s cup. “If I could see pictures of Phil when he was younger, I’d be able to tell. He’d look like me. I’d look like him. Right?”

  Audrey perks up. “Facebook?”

  I shake my head. “He’s too old. The pictures won’t go back that far.”

  Audrey stares off into the distance, her brain in hyper speed. She almost jumps off the bench. “I know! His yearbook.”

  His yearbook. She’s right. It’s perfect—well, as perfect as I’m going to get without his DNA. “But how am I going to get his yearbook? His school was in Colorado.”

  “You said he went to school with your mom, right? So wouldn’t he be in her yearbook? Have you looked at it before?”

  I shake my head no. But that doesn’t mean she doesn’t have one. I’ve never looked. Never really had a need until now. Being a librarian, Mom’s always been kind of a book hoarder. There’s that big wall of shelves in our living room, plus the bookcases in her bedroom. And Xan and I have our own in our bedrooms. I swear, if there were more room, she’d have crammed some bookshelves into the bathroom. It’s got to be on one of those shelves.

  “I’ll look for it when I get home.” I crumple what’s left of my Del’s cup into a little ball and aim it for the trash can across the way. I make it in, easily. A three-point shot.

  “You’ll let me know what you find tomorrow, right?”

  “Sure.”

  When Audrey smiles, I catch the tiniest piece of lemon rind stuck on her lip. “You have a little …” I point to my own lip.

  Audrey swipes her hand across her mouth. “Gone?”

  “Gone.”

  For a moment we’re both quiet. A tiny thought flits through my brain: Audrey has no idea the real reason I want Phil to be my dad. How it wouldn’t just change my past, but my future.

  Back in fifth grade, we had this hero project. You had to write an e
ssay about your personal hero, and then afterward there was this day where everyone in the whole grade dressed up like their hero, and pretended to be them for a whole day. You know how many kids chose their dads?

  A lot.

  It’s not like Phil’s the coolest guy on the planet or anything. I mean, the guy does do jumping jacks in his pajamas outside at the crack of dawn. But I bet if I got to know him, I’d find out more things that make him cool. Admirable, even. I mean, to start, he does have a motorcycle. And it’s pretty brave to travel across the whole country by yourself.

  It wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world to end up like Phil when I’m older. For one, it would mean I’d still be alive.

  16

  I WATCH THROUGH MY BEDROOM window as Mom’s car backs out of the driveway. She’s taking Xan to tae kwon do and running errands in between, which gives me about an hour to look for the yearbook. It’s not a lot of time, but it should be enough.

  I start in Mom’s bedroom, since that’ll be the hardest place to check later. It’s tidy in here—a lot tidier than my room, anyway—except for when it comes to books. First, there’s the pile on her bedside table, then the stack next to it that’s got to be modeled on the Leaning Tower of Pisa, and then there are the bookshelves.

  For someone who works around books all day, you’d think she might want a break when she gets home. But I guess I can’t exactly talk.

  I start with the ones by her bedside table, since there are fewer of them. Plus, maybe she dug the yearbook out knowing Phil was coming into town.

  A novel by Curtis Sittenfeld, two cookbooks about tomatoes, a bunch of interior decorating magazines, and a self-help book about finding love after loss. No yearbook.

  I’m halfway through tackling the Leaning Tower of Pisa when I hear the front door open. For a second there, the tower tips to the right, but I reach my hands out just in time to steady it.