by Jenn Bishop
I hate that I can’t tell. That I’ll never know. That there was so much going on behind that face that looked so happy most of the time.
I place the book back on the shelf, exactly where I found it.
Xander’s bed is unmade. It would have driven Dad crazy. He needed stuff to be in order, my dad. But Xander never even got to know that about him.
All he has is that picture in his book. And stories I don’t even tell him. Stories I keep locked up inside.
Someday he won’t even have a single memory of Dad. You don’t remember being that little.
Maybe that’s better, though. Not remembering. Because there are good memories and there are bad, and you don’t get to choose which ones stick in your brain forever.
I open the door to the guest room. There’s this new smell, the smell of Phil, I guess: pine needles and fresh grass. Maybe he brings the outdoors inside after all that time on his bike. The sheets are tucked in, the comforter smoothed over. Is Phil that tidy? Or did Mom do it for him, like she does for me when Grandma comes to town?
I check the pillow quick, hoping for a stray hair just in case. But there’s not even a single brown curly hair on the pillowcase. Aside from the smell, there’s no sign that Phil stayed here last night except for a navy-blue backpack on the chair in the corner.
I should not look in it. It’s his. I have no right.
I glance back at the door. In the months after Dad died, I used to have this feeling that he was watching me. Not like a ghost, exactly. More like how some people think of God. I haven’t had it in a while, though, but it’s back.
Just a little peek. Nothing more.
I unzip the front pouch. Pens and pencils. A sunglasses case. A pocket-size blue spiral notebook. I flip through it. Man, Phil’s handwriting is terrible. How can anyone read something like that? Anyway, there are just a few little notes—names and phone numbers—and the rest is blank.
I make sure everything is exactly as I found it and zip it back up.
Next, the main compartment. A Deep Springs College sweatshirt. And two books. An extremely worn motorcycle manual and a thick George R. R. Martin paperback with a superlong CVS receipt folded up about halfway through.
Thrumm-thrumm-thrumm.
Yikes!
I scramble to put everything back in and zip it up. I slam the door to his room and nearly trip running down the stairs.
It’s only when I’m at the front window that I realize it isn’t Phil at all. Just my next-door neighbor, Mr. Quintana, firing up his lawn mower. Black smoke gushes out of the thing, and it sputters down.
My heart sputters down too.
What was I even hoping to find in his backpack anyway? A letter to me confessing the truth? Pffft. No way.
Unless I can snag something with his DNA (and come up with whatever money it takes to get one of the kits), the yearbook is our best lead. Maybe there’s even a picture in there of him and Mom. Something that proves she’s been lying about at least one thing, so maybe she’s lying about more.
Audrey and I will get to the bottom of this. I just hope we can in time.
26
MONDAY MORNING THE TEEN LIBRARIAN calls in sick, so Mrs. Eisenberg heads upstairs to cover for her. They’re short-staffed today; half the librarians, including my mom, went to Newport for an all-day conference.
A magician’s coming this afternoon for a family program, so there’s no story hour this morning and the children’s room is oddly quiet. I’m mostly ready for Wednesday’s story hour—Battle Bunny—except I still need to make the name tags.
Since the book is all about messing with Little Golden Books, I’m taking different well-known characters, like the Poky Little Puppy, and photocopying them to make name tags. It’s time-consuming, but Mrs. Eisenberg said that was okay. Sometimes I think she worries she’s going to run out of stuff for me to do, so she doesn’t mind if my projects get a little, as she says, involved.
Audrey is upstairs helping the reference librarians.
Sometimes when it’s so quiet down here, I wish we could play music. Why is it that there’s always music playing softly at the grocery store or a doctor’s office, but never the library?
Feet thump in the stairwell, and then Audrey bursts through the door, clutching her stomach.
“Are you … sick?” I grab the papers from the copy machine and take them over to a table.
“Sick? No, Drew. It’s here.” She reaches under her shirt, pulling out a thin, dark green book.
The yearbook.
Audrey rushes over to the table and pulls out a chair. I sit down next to her.
“It came,” I say.
Deering High School Yearbook, 1995. I trace my fingers over the gold indented letters on the cover.
“What are you waiting for? Aren’t you going to open it?”
“Give me a sec, okay?”
Last night at supper, Xander got weirdly sniffly about Phil leaving again. But me, I just couldn’t take my eyes off him. I think Mom noticed too. Like she was watching me watch him. Does she wonder if I’ve figured it out? Does she think that’s why I’m being a lot nicer to Phil this time?
If we open the yearbook, and I find my proof and tell them I know, will he change his mind and stay?
“Drew?”
“Yeah?”
Audrey reaches out for my free hand and gives it a squeeze. “It’s going to be okay.”
But maybe it’s not, I think, squeezing back, my hand cold and clammy. Audrey doesn’t know the truth. She never knew my dad. She still thinks he’s alive.
There are no takebacks here. Dad will never be able to explain himself—or this—or anything. That’s all history.
I glance at the clock. We don’t have forever for this. In half an hour, another librarian will take over in the teen room and Mrs. Eisenberg will return to the children’s room and we’ll have to be done.
It’s going to be okay.
Like I have another choice?
I let go of Audrey’s hand and crack open the yearbook. She pulls her chair closer to me, so close I can hear her breathing through her nose. Short, fast breaths. Unfamiliar faces stare back at us from black-and-white pictures. I don’t know where to start.
Okay, not with the teacher section.
“Is there an index?” Audrey asks.
Right. The index. I flip to the back, and sure enough, there is. I scan through the Ps until I find it. Pittman, Philip.
“Whoa—he must’ve done a lot of stuff,” Audrey says.
“Huh?”
“He’s on twelve different pages. That’s a lot.”
She’s right. Most of the other names only have a few pages listed, not a dozen.
I grab a pencil and scribble down the page numbers on the back of a name tag.
“He must have been popular,” Audrey says as I flip to the first page listed, thirty-seven.
I shrug.
Page thirty-seven is in the special section for graduating seniors. Some of the pictures look like they were taken by professional photographers; others, not so much.
“Hey, that’s your last name.” Audrey points to the top of page thirty-six. “Funny. I wonder if there are any Nussbaums.”
I nearly drop the book. Staring back at me is my dad. James Leonard McCormack. What’s he doing in here?
“Oh my gosh. Look at Phil’s hair! So much of it.” Audrey’s laughing, but my eyes are still stuck on that picture of my dad. He didn’t wear glasses back then, and his brown hair was parted in the middle. (It was not a good look.) But he’s smiling and he looks nerdy, though not so nerdy that he couldn’t maybe get a girlfriend. And he looks so young. Like Anibal’s age, which makes sense. That’s how old Anibal is now—eighteen. But how is he in this yearbook?
“Hey.”
“Yeah?” I say, blinking. This has got to be a dream, not real life. Mom and Dad didn’t know each other in high school. They met after college—in Boston. Even though they both grew up in Colorado, it was B
oston that brought them together. Right? Or did I get it all mixed up? It’s been years since I heard their how-we-met story.
“Don’t you think Phil’s hair is nuts?”
I glance at the other side, page thirty-seven, the one I’m supposed to be looking at. She’s right. Phil’s hair is enormous. Those brown curls pretty much fill up his whole picture.
“Yeah,” I say quietly. “That’s a lot of hair.”
“Can we see if there are any Nussbaums? I’ll be quick.”
“Sure.” I hand her the yearbook. She’s fast, shaking her head already after checking the index. “What’s the next page?” She grabs the scrap paper.
“Forty-eight.”
That brings us to the class will. Maybe some people think it’s funny, the idea of leaving something behind for your friends, but there’s nothing funny about wills and why you leave them.
Each senior gets a fair amount of space, so my dad’s isn’t on this two-page spread. Just Phil’s.
Always remember: Phish, DMB, Boulder adventures, Sturgis!? No, Caveman tan, KP.
Thanks to: Mom, Dad, Andy. Love you forever.
Everyone else made a collage. Teeny-tiny pictures of their friends and family. Not Phil, though. There’s just the one picture. Him, I think, dangling by his arms from a huge tree branch, with someone who looks a few years younger than him dangling too. They’re just kids in the picture. Maybe even my age.
It’s so small I can barely make out their faces. Can’t see if either of them really looks like me.
“Caveman tan?”
I want to flip back a page or two to find Dad’s, but how can I say that to Audrey? There’s so much she doesn’t know about my dad. And I can’t stop and tell her the truth—not now.
“Page sixty-two. Coming right up.” Audrey flips fast, and then we’re there. A two-page spread for the fall play, A Midsummer Night’s Dream. There’s a cast picture on the right, but that’s page sixty-three.
Two guys not in costume, just T-shirts, their arms slung over each other’s shoulders. One has a baseball hat on backward. The other, a pile of curly hair. Beneath the photo: Jimmy and Phil cutting loose before rehearsal.
There’s no way—that’s my dad, staring back at me. My dad … and Phil.
They knew each other?
I flip back to the index, checking Dad’s name this time. Looking for the overlap between him and Phil. All the pages they’re on together. Seventy-eight. Model United Nations. There they are again, in the back row. Right next to each other.
Page 106, the school talent show. The two of them are onstage with something on the top of their heads that makes them look like coneheads. Future SNL stars, the caption reads.
Sixty-five. A picture of just the two of them in running tank tops, with orange-slice smiles. Below, a quote from Phil: We may not be the fastest, but we have the most fun.
They didn’t just know each other. They were friends. Maybe best friends.
I shut the book.
“Drew?”
I push back my chair. I feel—sick? Like the world under my feet is unsteady. I used to feel this way all the time three summers ago when Mom left me at rec camp. Like the earth had started spinning faster and I was the only one who could feel it.
I dash to the bathroom.
It’s all coming back to me. Three years erased in a second. I get to the toilet just in time for my stomach to empty into it. The yearbook clatters against the tile floor.
Phil and my dad—they were friends? No. No, no, no.
“Drew?” Audrey’s outside the bathroom door. “Are you okay?”
I bite down on the inside of my cheek so hard that I puncture it. At the sink, I spit out saliva and blood.
“If you don’t say anything, I’m going upstairs to get Mrs. Eisenberg. I’m serious.”
“Don’t,” I yell back, splashing water on my face.
This wasn’t supposed to happen. There were two scenarios, two, that I’d prepared myself for. For Phil’s face to look like mine, enough that I could ask him and Mom. Or for Phil to look nothing like me.
I didn’t know what that would feel like, honestly. Would I be disappointed? It’s sort of like how you don’t know your true feelings until you do a coin toss. Except this coin has three sides somehow. Mom’s old friend. That was how she introduced Phil. But he and Dad, they were friends. No, not just friends. Best friends. How could Mom have left that out?
“I know it’s the men’s room, but I’m coming in if you don’t come out! One, two—”
I push open the door.
“Drew.” Audrey’s wringing her hands again. It’s like how she was that day with Benny, except worse. “What’s wrong? Are you … are you sick? Wait—is he actually your dad? Phil?”
That’s what she thinks?
Mrs. Eisenberg comes out the elevator door before I’ve answered Audrey. “Hey, Mrs. Eisenberg?”
“Yes, Drew.”
“I think I’m coming down with something. Could you give me a ride home?”
“You’re not feeling well?”
I shake my head.
“He threw up,” Audrey adds.
Mrs. Eisenberg makes a bit of a face. “Oh, dear. Let’s see about getting you home. I’ll call upstairs and check if anyone’s heading that way for lunch. Just a sec.”
The yearbook is still lying on the bathroom floor. I run back in for it, then snag a few magazines off the spinning rack to wrap around it. I feel kind of guilty for doing it—I know I should check them out upstairs—but I’ll bring them right back tomorrow.
“Looks like Pauline’s heading out any second now. She can give you a ride. Do you want me to call your mom?”
“No, I’ll text her.” I pull out my phone and act like I’m texting her, though I never press send.
Audrey scribbles something down on a piece of paper, folds it, and places it in my hand. I stick it in my pocket without looking and head upstairs to meet Pauline.
On the short ride to my house, I pull out Audrey’s note.
Call me later, okay? She’s written down her phone number too.
Go figure. This would be the first time I get a girl’s number.
27
PAULINE PULLS INTO MY DRIVEWAY. “You sure you don’t want a Gatorade or some ginger ale? I’m more than happy to swing by CVS.”
“No. Thanks, though.” I reach for the door handle. “I think we’ve got some in the fridge.”
“Well, I hope you feel better, Drew. You change your mind, you just give us a holler, okay?”
“Okay.”
Mom keeps a key hidden under a fake rock tucked behind some plants. I find it and wave back at Pauline. She backs out of the driveway as I’m putting the key in the lock.
It’s cool and dark inside my house, like a church. Not that I’ve been in years. Church was a Dad thing.
Dad.
It’s got to be out there somewhere in the shed. His copy of the yearbook. Probably been there all along. I crack open the sliding glass door and slip out. The grass is crunchy, like it needs a good watering.
I fling open the door to the shed. Light streams in through the skylight overhead, catching all the tiny particles of dust stirred up from me opening the door. I slam the door behind me.
It was never Phil. It was always you. Always, always, always you.
“What else are you hiding, huh?” I shout. “You. Mom. Phil. You’re all liars.”
I reach for the first box I see. I drop it on my foot and kick it like I’m punting a football, kick it as hard as I can, sending it crashing it into a wall of boxes.
But it’s not heavy enough to knock them over. The wall shakes, but it remains standing.
I rip another off the top and I chuck it—chuck it against the wall with whatever force is left in my body. My arms feel weak. From puking? Or because I don’t have a dad tossing footballs with me on the weekend, the way Filipe has Mr. Nunes? No one’s here to teach me how to be a man.
I grab another
box and hurl it. And then another. Glass shatters inside. Metal clangs against metal. Papers scatter, cascading all over the floor. An endless sea of paper.
All his stuff. All of it.
It’s so much.
And it’s nothing, too.
It’s nothing but stuff.
“I hate you, you know that?”
I close my eyes and wait, like I’m leaving space for him to answer. The biggest space. The space he’ll never fill.
“Maybe Xander doesn’t yet. But someday he will too. Someday he’ll wish someone else could be his father. Anyone but you.”
My throat is raw and my stomach is growling and I’m about to drop-kick another box when I think I hear a knock on the shed door.
It’s the middle of the day. Who could even be here? Mom’s still in Newport.
It better not be Filipe. After how things have been with us lately, he’s the last person on earth I want to see right now. If he thought me pushing and punching him was crazy, he sure shouldn’t see this.
For a moment I stand perfectly still, not making a sound. If I’m totally quiet, maybe whoever it is will go away.
But then the door handle turns. And when I look behind me, it’s Audrey standing in the doorway, a plastic Rite Aid bag dangling from her wrist. “He’s really your dad? Phil, I mean.” Her eyes meet mine. “Wait—isn’t he?”
I shake my head no, my eyes darting around the shed, seeing for the first time everything as Audrey must see it. Papers everywhere. Boxes upturned. Tiny shards of clear broken glass. A big, broken, heaping mess.
Audrey chews on her lip. “But isn’t that what you wanted?”
“No,” I say at first. “Yes.”
How can they both be wrong? How can they both be right?
“It’s just …” I walk closer, stepping over one of the smashed boxes, something crunching beneath my sneaker. “If my real dad was Phil … it would mean he’d left me for twelve years. Just ditched me, let me be raised by someone else only to come back now. But—” I swipe my hand under my nose. All the things I’ve wanted to say aloud for so long, to somebody, anybody, rise into my chest. Fill it up where for so long it’s been deflated. “At least you can fix that. There’s still time.”
