Center of Gravity

by Shaunta Grimes

I just stay quiet and frantically turn each carton over. I’m methodical about it. Working from one end of the cooler and turning over every single container, then putting it back when I see a kid I already know.

  Ricky says, “For real. They’re all the same.”

  “No, they’re not,” I say quietly. Out of the corner of my eye I see my friends moving away with their snacks.

  Tears build up behind my eyes. I want to stop. I want to not be this girl.

  “Loser,” one of the twins, either Matt or Luke, says. Great. “Get out of the way!”

  He pushes against me with his hip and I stumble sideways.

  The kid passing out the snacks says, “Hey, come on. Just get your milk and move on.”

  Does he really think I would stand here flipping over milk cartons if I had a choice?

  “I can’t,” I whisper.

  “She’s touching every single carton!” a girl says. She’s a little taller than me and much skinnier. All bones and joints and a cloud of brown curls. She’s looking at me like I’m some kind of sludge stuck on the bottom of her shoe.

  “I’m sorry,” I murmur, but I go back to where I left off, turning over two more cartons.

  “Just take one,” the guy handing out the crackers says.

  God, I want to. Please let me just walk away. I tense up, trying, but I can’t do it. What if the next carton has a kid on it that I don’t already have?

  “Jay Jay, your girlfriend is a total freak!” That comes from somewhere behind me, and my cheeks burn.

  “She’s not Jay Jay’s girl. I think she’s Oscar’s.”

  The skinny girl with the hair laughs.

  I want to die.

  There are at least fifty kids in the room, and just the one teenage boy handing out cheese crackers. I know without waiting to see what will happen that he’ll try to manage me instead of them.

  “Hey!” he calls out. “Watch your mouths.”

  Okay, so that surprises me. But then he puts a hand on my elbow and says under his breath, “Just take a carton, okay?”

  Please, God, just let me take a carton. Yesterday I went home with three. Today I can’t find one.

  Before I can answer, Marvel is beside me. He starts to turn over cartons, showing them to me. Petey and Jay Jay are slower, but not by much.

  Oscar stays by the door.

  The second carton Petey turns over has a little boy on it that I’ve never seen. I grab the carton and whisper, “Thank you.”

  To Petey. To Jay Jay and Marvel. To Oscar who stayed over by the door, watching. To God. Whatever.

  * * *

  We eat snack in the game room, sitting along the wall behind the Losers’ table. By the time I’ve finished my cheese crackers and milk, I feel better.

  Now I need to check in with Lila.

  The idea of calling her is weighing on me, and I figure I might as well get it over with.

  “Marvel, can you play the next game?” I ask.

  Oscar looks up sharply. “We need to practice.”

  “I just need to check in with my … Lila.” I look at Aaron and his crew, leaning against the wall watching us, and lower my voice. “I won’t be long.”

  Ricky stands up straighter, and Jay Jay waves him away. “Just hurry up,” he says to me.

  I carry my empty milk carton with me, thinking I can slip into the girls’ bathroom after and at least rinse it out before I put it away. It would be nice not to lower myself from a mess to a mess who smells like sour milk.

  The picture on the back of today’s carton is of a seven-year-old boy named Stephen Davis. He’s pale and has a sad look in his light eyes. Like maybe he knew that he was days or weeks or months away from being taken from his family.

  Somewhere in Virginia, his parents, maybe his brothers and sisters, grandparents, aunts and uncles, have spent the last nine months wondering if he is still alive. They never stop thinking about him. I am sure of that. There’s probably a closet full of unopened Christmas and birthday presents, stacks of missing child flyers on the dining room table, and his parents praying every night that he’ll come home.

  I dig in my pocket for the paper Lila gave me with her phone number written on it. My number, too, I guess. I should memorize it.

  “Hey, Tessa.” Jessica is at the desk now. She smiles at me, her finger holding her place on the page she’s reading. That big textbook still.

  “Can I use the phone? I need to check in.”

  “Sure.” She pulls a big black rotary phone up to the counter with her free hand and goes back to reading.

  After I dial, the phone rings three times. I have a moment of panic—what if Lila isn’t home? She said she was shopping today. Maybe she’s out adding diapers to her giant Pampers wall. If she doesn’t answer when I call to check in, does it still count?

  But before the fourth ring starts, Lila picks up. “Hello?”

  I turn my back to Jessica and say, “It’s me. Tessa.”

  I wince. Why do I have to sound like such a dork?

  Lila hesitates, then says, “Having fun?”

  “Sure. Just playing foosball.”

  “Okay.”

  We’re both silent for a long time. Too long. Long enough that Jessica looks up at me again. I say, “Okay, well…”

  “Thanks for calling,” she says. Like I’m a stranger or something.

  I hang up, and Jessica lifts her chin toward the game room behind me. Petey is standing in the doorway. He lifts his arms in a question. Are you coming or what?

  What if all the practice in the world doesn’t matter? What will Petey and Marvel do if they don’t have that prize money?

  What will they do if we win the thousand dollars?

  On my way past the bulletin board, I pull one of the little phone-number flaps off the flyer the woman hung the day before. I don’t know what a one-afternoon-a-week babysitting job pays, but it would be actual cash and not just a pipe dream.

  NINE

  Just like the day before, we ate our lunch at the picnic table. Everyone, including me, gave Marvel the most nutritious food from our collective stash.

  After lunch, we have the whole afternoon to practice mostly uninterrupted. No one slaps their hand on the Losers’ table.

  “Won’t last,” Oscar says when we’re on our way out to the bike rack at six. I’m the good kind of hungry. The kind that means anything you eat for dinner will be your new favorite food. “Pretty soon at least Aaron’s new crew will want in on it.”

  “Yeah.” Jay Jay spins the lock on his bike. “We’ll see.”

  “Is the community center open every day?” I ask.

  “Except Sunday.” Marvel’s face clouds over when he tells me that. “Sunday’s the worst day.”

  I want to tell them about my idea for making some money over the summer. Real money that Petey and Marvel don’t have to win. The words get stuck in my throat, though, like my jaw has rusted shut again.

  Jay Jay puts an arm around Marvel and says, “We should camp out tomorrow night, after the tournament.”

  “Camp out?” I ask.

  “No girls allowed,” Oscar says as he walks his bike away from the rack.

  “Tessa’s not a girl. She’s a Loser.” Marvel looks up at his brother and asks, more quietly, “We can go, right?”

  “Yeah,” Petey says. “We’ll figure it out.”

  “Where do you camp out?” I ask Jay Jay as we start to ride. “In your backyard?”

  Megan and I used to do that in the summer, when it was warm. Our dads would pitch us a tent in her backyard or mine, and we’d pretend we were in the forest, scaring each other half to death with ghost stories.

  “In the clubhouse,” he says. “But that’s a secret.”

  I ride beside him as he starts after the other boys. “Well, then, where does your grandma think you are?”

  “In my bedroom. We sneak out.” He looks at me, and I think maybe he’s trying to decide if I’m brave enough. I want to be brave enough.


  “Can I come?” I ask.

  He nods and then pedals away. I pick up the pace, because if I fall too far behind, I’ll never find my way home.

  * * *

  Later that night, when my milk carton is clean and I’ve gone through my ritual, I sit on my bed and look at the little slip of paper I took from the babysitting flyer at the community center and an idea starts to take shape.

  I’ll tell the boys about it during the campout, after I see how the first day of the tournament goes.

  There’s a knock on my bedroom door, and I look up. “Yeah?”

  “Lila made grilled cheese and tomato soup for dinner,” Dad says. He looks tired, but in the good way, like how I feel hungry.

  “Okay.”

  He stays in the doorway looking at me. “How was your day?”

  “It was pretty good,” I say. And I mean it. “How was yours?”

  “Not bad.” He comes all the way into my room. He looks at the wallpaper, then the crib. This feels oddly formal. “Settling in okay?”

  “I guess so. There’s a foosball tournament that starts tomorrow. Jay Jay and Oscar and Petey want me to be on their team.”

  “Of course they do,” he says. “You’re a rock star.”

  “Yeah, right.” Yesterday, he couldn’t even remember if I played foosball or pinball with Megan. I make myself not look at my shoebox. It’s sitting in its cubby in my headboard. Fifty-six cards inside now. I’m not a rock star. “I’m a Loser.”

  Dad sits beside me on the edge of my bed. “You’re not a loser, Cookie.”

  When I said it, I was thinking about the boys and their foosball team name. And how nice it was to be part of something. But when it came out of my mouth, my voice cracked and now I’m on the verge of tears. “I am too. And not the good kind.”

  I pull the neck of my T-shirt up to wipe my wet cheeks.

  “The good kind of loser?”

  I nod, but he’ll never understand. He looks at me for a minute, like he’s trying to decide if he recognizes me.

  “Tessa, I’m sorry about … everything.” He swings a hand toward the crib. He looks at my shoebox, then back at me. “About all of this.”

  I shake my head. “It’s okay.”

  “I miss your mom.” His voice catches and nearly breaks my heart. “I miss her so much, Tessa. I wish she were here. I wish—”

  I wrap my arms around his waist, ducking my head under his arm. The unbalance is painful. Like if I don’t hold on tight enough, I’ll slip off the planet.

  “I’ll try to do better,” I finally say.

  “Oh, baby.” He tightens his arm around me. “You don’t have to do anything better. I’m the one who…”

  “Would it be easier if I did live with Gran?” He looks at me for a long moment, and I think that he’s thinking about it. Wondering what it would be like if it was just him and Lila and the baby. A brand-new little family without the heavy weight of sadness constantly sitting on it. I try to stay calm, but I can’t breathe.

  I push away from him. “Then you wouldn’t have to worry about me.”

  “You can’t leave me.” I’ve never seen my dad cry before, except for at Mom’s funeral when he had to stand up in front of everyone and talk about her. He’s not crying now, but his voice sounds strange. “Don’t even think about it.”

  “I won’t.” How awful is it for Petey and Marvel to be so desperate to get away from their mom? It’s been a long time since I felt anything remotely close to lucky, but I feel it now, like a lightning bolt through me. “I won’t go anywhere, I promise.”

  Dad laughs a little and pulls his glasses up to his forehead to wipe his eyes. Maybe I was wrong about him not crying. “We’re going to pull through, you know.”

  “Yeah.”

  Dad tilts his head, and I try to look grown-up. “I know that I’m not doing this right. I don’t think I’ve done anything right since Mom got sick.”

  I inhale, a little afraid that my lungs won’t expand. “I wish I were more like her.”

  “What do you mean?”

  A thought comes into my head and out of my mouth so fast that I don’t have time to try to stop it. “I wish she were here, instead of me.”

  Dad grips my arms and pulls me to my feet in front of him. “Look at me.”

  I try. I really do. But it hurts to see his face. It hurts to know how much he misses Mom and to know that I’m just making things harder for him. I cross my arms over my chest and dig my fingers into my biceps.

  He gives me a little shake, and I finally look at him. He looks back for a long minute. I wonder if he’s wishing the same thing I am. He can’t say it out loud. Ever. But I wonder if he thinks it.

  “I wish,” he finally says, and the sick feeling I’ve had in my stomach pretty much since I first heard of Lila twists. “Cookie, I wish that you could see yourself the way I see you.”

  I pull away from his grip on my arms.

  “I know a lot of kids,” he says. “A ton of them, and you are by far the coolest kid I’ve ever met.”

  “You have to say that. You’re my dad.”

  “Your mom was only a few years older than you are when we met.” He stays sitting on my bed, leaning forward a little toward me. “I was in the eleventh grade. Skinny kid, with glasses and acne, and I swear, Tessa, I knew, the moment she said hello to me, I knew I’d never meet anyone like her again in my whole life. But then—”

  “But then you met Lila,” I say.

  “No. But then I met you.”

  * * *

  “Did you have fun today?” Lila asks as she dips the tip of a grilled cheese triangle into tomato soup.

  I decided before coming downstairs that I’d just leave out the awkward parts of the day, but I don’t have to lie even a little bit when I say, “Yeah. I did.”

  “Good.”

  “There’s a lady looking for a babysitter. Just on Thursday afternoons. I was thinking about calling her to see if I can do it.”

  Dad’s eyebrows shoot up. “Is it a mom from the community center?”

  But Lila talks over him. “Oh, that’s a fantastic idea. I used to babysit all the time when I was your age.”

  Those kids probably still need a babysitter, I think, but don’t say out loud. I just say, “Cool.”

  “I could introduce you to the families I used to sit for,” she says.

  I blink, because she made my point for me, and I don’t let myself look at Dad. “Okay.”

  Dad asks, “Are you headed back for more foosball tomorrow?”

  “Remember? The tournament starts tomorrow. I have to be there at ten.”

  “Right. Sounds fun,” Dad says. “I’m glad you have something to keep you busy, actually. I’m going to have to work all summer, getting ready to start at my new school. I’m teaching political science. Did I tell you that? Seniors.”

  “No, you didn’t.”

  “I’m so proud of you,” Lila says to him.

  It’s been a long time, I realize, since I’ve seen him really smile. The way he smiles at Lila right now. I reach for the milk carton that’s sitting on the table and turn it so the two girls on the back of it are facing me.

  Laurel and Becca. A teenager and a little girl. Laurel is pretty, with long curly hair and a wide smile. Becca is six years old. She’s missing a front tooth.

  Dad puts a hand over mine and pulls it from the carton. “Thank you for remembering to check in with Lila today.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  Lila takes a breath, then reaches for the carton, fills her glass with what’s left of the milk, and hands it to me. “I found a good deal on your soap today.”

  My brain is having trouble processing the question of whether I’ll be able to use soap that smells like Mom if Lila bought it. I murmur, “Thank you.”

  I want to refuse the carton, but I can’t. I want to get up and go to my room, but now that I have the empty carton, I can’t do that either.

  I absolutely do not want to sta
rt my ritual with Lila and Dad watching me. So, I just sit there with Laurel and Becca looking at me from their perch on the table.

  “You’re coming to the tournament, aren’t you?” I ask my dad. “We need to leave about nine thirty.”

  “I wish I could. The department head called a meeting about that conference.” Dad looks at Lila. “Can you take her?”

  I can’t make myself look at either of them. I’ll start to cry if I do. Lila says, “Gordy.”

  No one says anything for a minute. Then Lila says, “Of course I can take her.”

  * * *

  Jay Jay said he saw my light go on the night before. I flip it on when I finally make it upstairs with the opened, flattened, clean milk carton, and I wonder if he’ll come over again.

  I set the carton on my desk and go to the door that leads to the balcony. If he can see my light, maybe I can see his, too.

  I look toward the big house, and my eyes are drawn, instantly, to the only lit window. I don’t know which one is his, but the window that has a light on is the tower room he told me belonged to his aunt Lucy. It’s in a rounded turret directly across from my room.

  The windows actually have many small diamond-shaped panes. It takes me a minute to realize that there is a message spelled out across some of them.

  He’s used something, maybe masking tape, to write out the word Clubhouse with one letter in each pane. Only they’re backward for me. Still, the exclamation point makes my heart beat harder, which I suppose is the point.

  It’s dark out, and if I ask Dad if I can go to the beach now, he’ll say no. If I tell him about Jay Jay’s message, he’ll probably insist on going next door to find out what’s going on.

  I pick up my milk carton and take it to my bed, so I can use my bird scissors to trim around Laurel and Becca while I think.

  I follow through with my ritual—reciting their names, the information about them that the Center for Missing and Exploited Children has printed under their pictures.

  As I’m finishing, I hear Dad and Lila moving around in the room below mine. They’re getting ready for bed. I put my feet in my flip-flops and go back out onto the balcony before I can really think about them or about my mom or about anything at all.