by Lisa Graff
I sighed as I headed for the door. I turned around to say Mom wasn’t being fair, but she was back to polishing, the exact same spot she’d been cleaning when I came in.
fourteen
I peeled off all my Band-Aids careful slow—off my arms and my knees and my legs and everywhere—each one pulling my skin with a painful pinch at the end. I didn’t want to take them off, but when Mom came in to vacuum my floor, she said I didn’t have a choice young lady. I got to keep the one on my arm scrape, though, even though the scrape wasn’t bleeding, because when I tucked up the corner to show her underneath, what with the yellow goo just starting to form a scab, she made a grossed-out face and said I could leave it on. Also I kept the four on my toes for the athlete’s foot, because Mom didn’t know about those ones, and I didn’t plan on telling her.
As soon as she finished with the vacuuming, I dove under my bed to find my Band-Aid box, but it turned out there weren’t any left in it. I dumped the box in the trash can and went downstairs to pack the cooler for the lake. Even if Mom wasn’t coming, I wasn’t going to have a bad Fourth of July.
I lugged the watermelon out of the fridge, and all the cans of orange soda we had, and shoved them inside the cooler. Then I opened up the bread box to get out the bread for the ducks.
It was empty.
“Dad!” I hollered. “Dad! Where’s the bread?”
Dad popped his head into the kitchen, holding a folded-up magazine. “What’s that, Moonbeam?” he asked.
“Where did the bread go?”
“Oh.” He shook his head. “It was all stale, so I threw it away.”
“Dad! I was saving that. For the ducks. I told you.”
He checked his watch. “Sorry, Moonbeam. I guess I forgot. You about ready to go?”
“I guess,” I grumbled. “Let me just get something.” I went upstairs and found the pig book, shoved under a pile of blankets at the foot of my bed. I figured if I wasn’t going to have Jared or my mom or the ducks to keep me company, I might as well bring something to do.
By the time we got to the lake, all the good grassy spots by the water were taken, so Dad and I set up our blanket and chairs over by the snack stand.
“Can I have some money?” I asked Dad. “I want to get food.”
Dad dug ten dollars out of his pocket and handed it to me without looking up from his magazine.
“Thanks.”
Usually Mom said two hot dogs was the limit, but I figured Dad wouldn’t care how many I ate, so I was going to get four. But while I was waiting in line, I started to think about the chapter in the big green book about food poisoning. By the time I got to the front of the line, I had folded the ten-dollar bill into a tiny square and unfolded it five times, thinking hard.
“Can I help you?” the man inside the snack stand asked me.
I looked at his fingers. They were a little grimy under the nails.
“Who cooks the hot dogs?” I asked him. “Do you do it?”
He pointed his thumb over his shoulder. “Jimmy’s at the grill tonight. How many you want?”
“What temperature do you cook them at?”
“Huh?” he asked.
“How hot is the grill?”
He wrinkled his forehead. “It’s a grill,” he said. “It’s hot.”
“But how hot?” I leaned my head over to try to see past the snack stand to the grill behind. “Is Jimmy wearing gloves? How long has the meat been out? What’s the expiration date?”
He put his elbows up on the counter. “You want a hot dog or not, kid?”
I sighed. The hot dogs smelled barely burned on the sides, just the way I liked them, but food poisoning could kill you. “No,” I said. “Thanks.” And I slumped back over toward our spot on the blanket.
I was halfway there when I felt a poke in my back.
“Hey, Aaaaaannie.” It was Doug Zimmerman. He was holding a cardboard box with six hot dogs inside, and all of them were one-hundred-percent covered in ketchup.
“Hey,” I said, and I kept on walking.
“I’m not mad about you hosing me,” Doug said, walking quick after me. “Just so you know.”
“You’re not?”
“Nah. I figure now we’re even from when I ninja attacked you.”
I thought about that. It sounded pretty fair to me. “Okay,” I said.
I kept on walking, but Doug blocked me with his foot, so I had to stop or I’d crash right into him. “Hey, you want to know what I did with that badger?” he asked me.
“What badger?”
“The one from Mrs. Harper’s yard sale. You wanna know what I did with it?”
“Not really.”
“I stuck it in Trent’s closet!” Doug said. “Way up high on the top shelf. And it’s leaning out far, too, so the next time Trent opens his closet door, it’ll fall on him.”
“Okay,” I said, trying to pass him. But Doug blocked me again. I had to step back quick so his hot dogs didn’t mash into my shirt and make me all ketchupy.
“And I glued shark teeth in its mouth, too,” he told me. “Like fangs. It’s real scary. And down at the bottom where it said ‘Badger’? I changed it. Now it says ‘Evil Badger of Doom.’ Trent’s gonna pee his pants for sure.”
“That’s great, Doug. Really,” I said. “Now can you let me go? I have stuff to do.”
“What sort of stuff?”
“I have a book to read.”
Doug wrinkled his nose. “That’s boring. Why don’t you come do the obstacle course with us? Aaron helped us set it up real good.” He pointed toward the far end of the grass, where the big rocks jutted into the lake. “Rebecca’s there too. There’s lots of kids from school.”
I looked, and sure enough, there were half the kids from our class, Rebecca and Nadia and Sue Beth too. They were attacking each other with pool noodles, and splashing in and out of the water doing a crab walk. Everyone was laughing and shrieking so hard, you could probably hear them from outer space. I wouldn’t have gone over there if someone paid me.
“No thanks,” I said to Doug. “Looks too dangerous.”
“It is not,” he said, and I could tell by the way he rolled his eyes that he was feeling the way that Dr. Young liked to call exasperated. “It’s totally fine. Anyway”—he grabbed one of the hot dogs out of the box and took a big bite, munching with his mouth open so I could see all the pieces as he chewed—“you do dangerous stuff all the time.”
“No I don’t,” I said.
“Do too. You go in the car with your parents, for one thing. That’s dangerous, ’cause you could get in a car accident. And even just eating lunch you could choke on a sandwich or something.”
“Shut up,” I told him. “You don’t even know what you’re talking about.” But he was right, and I knew it. Cars and eating were dangerous. “But…” I said, trying to think things out, “that’s different, though. Because you have to do that stuff—you don’t have a choice. You just need to be careful when you do it. Like wearing a seat belt, and chewing all the way. But obstacle courses”—I looked over across the grass, where Rebecca was dodging Aaron’s Super Soaker and screaming—“there’s no reason to do that at all.”
Doug put the rest of the hot dog back in the box and swallowed. He was looking at me like I was a nut job. “You do it ’cause it’s fun, Annie,” he said. And he shrugged his shoulders and walked away.
For the next hour or so Dad and I sat around waiting for the sun to go down, Dad reading his magazine and me reading Charlotte’s Web. We drank orange soda and nibbled on watermelon without talking, while everyone around us laughed and shouted and played music and ran around looking like they were having a lot more fun than we were. I wished I had the bread for the ducks. I wished my mom were there. I wondered what happy things she’d think up if I asked her. They’d be all about vacuuming, probably. I sighed and turned a page in my book.
After a while the sky got so dark that I had to squint my eyes to read. I looked over at Dad, wh
o had set his magazine down beside him on the blanket and was staring at a swarm of gnats. I wondered for a minute if he might like playing the picnic game, but I never opened my mouth to ask him. Instead I just traced my pointer finger over the picture of the animals on the front of my book, over and over, covering every single line, until the sky finally turned a deep blue-black, and everyone got whisper quiet. That’s when the fireworks started up.
I lay on my back on the blanket, my bare toes tickling a patch of grass, and I watched the sky over the lake light up all different colors. Then, after a while, I closed my eyes and I just listened. Everyone around me was oohing and ahhing, every time the fireworks popped, but I didn’t need to look anymore.
Last year it had been all of us, me and Mom and Dad and Jared. All of us together, sitting on our blanket like usual, right up close to the water. And I’d been busy watching the fireworks when all of a sudden, in the middle of a big-kazam loud one, Jared caught me off guard and dumped a handful of grass right on my head. So I waited until I knew he wasn’t expecting it, and then I pretended to be looking at the sky, but really I was grabbing at the grass next to me, and when I had a good chunk I stuffed it down his shirt. And then he got me back with grass in my socks. After that there was some chasing but finally we decided to call a truce and we snuggled up next to Mom and Dad under the extra blanket, all of us together cozy warm, and watched the rest of the show. And then, just after the last firework had gone off but right before everyone started clapping, in that second of quiet, Jared turned to look at me and I thought he was going to shove grass in my socks again but he didn’t. He just grinned real big and said, “That was fun, huh?”
I wished there was a way to keep that in a bottle, that one moment of wonderful perfect, so I could open it up whenever I needed to get a good whiff.
When the fireworks were all over, I opened my eyes and stared up into the black sky speckled with stars and firework dust. Everyone started rustling around, picking up their stuff and heading back to their cars. I wanted to stay there forever, stretched out on the grass in the dark with just the hint of a breeze.
“You coming, Moonbeam?” Dad asked.
I sighed big and sat up, shoving the last of the watermelon back in the cooler.
There were a million and a half cars leaving the lake, so Dad had to drive about an inch per minute slow, which made me glad because what Doug had said about car accidents was making me extra worried. I decided right then that I was going to wear my helmet whenever we drove somewhere. I twisted against my seat belt to watch the boats on the lake as we drove by, and I got to thinking. Mostly what I was thinking about was how, between the hosing at the car wash and having to take off all my Band-Aids and the ducks and the hot dogs and everything, it had been the worst Fourth of July in the history of the universe. And the more I got to thinking, it all got to making me mad.
“Dad?” I said finally, when we were just a block from home.
“Yes, Moonbeam?”
“Why didn’t you tell me about the uniforms?”
“What’s that?” He kept his eyes on the road as we turned the corner.
“Why didn’t you tell me I didn’t have to wear my stupid Sunbird outfit today at the car wash? Mrs. Harper called you and told you, and you didn’t even say anything.”
“Sorry, Moonbeam,” he said, slowing down to pull into our driveway. “I guess I must have forgotten.”
He stopped the car and turned the engine off, plowing outside before I had a chance to say anything else. I followed him into the house and found my mom coming down the stairs with a basket of laundry.
“Hey there,” she greeted us as Dad closed the front door. “How were the fireworks?”
I gave her an eyeball glare so fiery hot it could’ve toasted marshmallows. “They were fine,” I said. “You would know that if you’d been there.”
Dad glanced at my mother and then looked at me. “Now, Moonbeam…,” he said. I swiveled on my heel and gave him the eyeball glare too.
“Don’t call me Moonbeam anymore,” I told him.
“What?” he said.
“Don’t call me that anymore unless you mean it.”
Mom came down the last few steps. “Annie, are you okay?” she asked. “What’s going on?”
I shook my head at them, at both of them. “You still have to be my parents, you know. Even if Jared’s dead. You still have to be my parents.” And then I bolted past my mom up the stairs and into my room, slamming my door closed behind me.
Ten minutes later I was stretched out on my bed with my arms over my face when there was a quiet tap on my door, and Mom peeked her head inside my room. “Annie?” she said, wispy-quiet. I didn’t answer.
She opened the door all the way and walked softly softly over to my bed, sitting on the edge beside me. “We’re trying, you know,” she said. She took a long, deep breath. “Your father and I. We’re really trying.”
I didn’t say anything, just stared at the inside crook of my elbow. I had a headache, right at the front of my brain, and I was thinking it was probably a migraine.
After a few minutes Mom stood up and gave me a peck on the forehead, then left my room as quiet as she’d come in, shutting the door as she went.
When the door clicked closed against the latch, I turned to look at it.
“Try harder,” I said. But it just came out a whisper.
fifteen
The next morning I still had that headache, and my stomach was a little bit queasy too. So after I watched Mom drive off in her car for work, and Dad was busy clacking in his office, I went on another search for the big green book.
I searched for an hour and a half almost, in the weirdest spots I could think of—at the bottom of the recycle bin, behind the television, underneath the fern in the den. Finally I found it, behind a stack of towels in the upstairs linen closet. I yanked it out and went to my room to read.
It turned out there were about a million things I might have, the flu or a concussion or Colorado tick fever or even mono. But I was pretty positive that out of all of them, I had Ebola. And wouldn’t you know, there was no cure for that one. It was all rashes and bleeding, and then you just up and died, and no one could save you.
In the meantime, I needed more Band-Aids. I strapped on my helmet, wrapped up my ankles good and tight, and headed down to Lippy’s, just walking.
Mr. L. wasn’t there. It was only Tommy behind the counter, playing a video game on a little gray machine like the one Jared used to have, that beeped and buzzed every three seconds. I went to the Band-Aid aisle and plucked a box off the shelf.
“Two eighty-three,” Tommy said when he rang me up.
“Um”—I straightened a stack of breath mints on the counter—“actually, I don’t have any money.”
Tommy shut the cash register drawer with a clang. “Now I have to do a void,” he said.
“But I can do sweeping,” I said, really quick. “And then instead of paying me for that you can just give me the Band-Aids.”
He was scribbling numbers on a slip of paper beside the register. “We don’t do that,” he said without looking up. “We only do money.”
“But what if—”
“You have to talk to my dad when he gets back.”
“When’s that?”
Tommy shrugged. “Twenty minutes? He just left to get change.”
“You think he’ll give me the Band-Aids then, if I do sweeping?” I asked.
“Probably not.”
“Oh.” I sighed. “Hey, Tommy?”
“Yeah?”
“Do you know any good doctors I can ask a question about vitamins? I need to start taking some, but you’re supposed to talk to a doctor first before you do it, and I don’t know who to ask.”
Tommy put his pen down and squinted at me like I was a moron. “Why don’t you ask Dr. Young? I thought you went over there all the time. He probably has Band-Aids too, you know.”
“Yeah, but…” I turned the Band-Aid
box on its side. I couldn’t go over to Rebecca’s house to talk to her dad about vitamins if she was busy hating me. “You don’t know any other doctors?”
He pointed to the Band-Aid box. “Put those back, okay?” Then he went back to his video game.
I slid the Band-Aids off the counter. “You should be nicer to me, you know,” I told him as I put the box back on the shelf. “I have Ebola.”
“No you don’t,” Tommy said, his game still beeping.
“I could,” I said. “And then wouldn’t you feel bad?”
He didn’t answer, so I headed for the door.
All of a sudden the beeps stopped. “Hey, Annie?” Tommy called.
I turned around. “Yeah?”
“I’m having my birthday party on Friday,” he said. “Bowling. It’s just gonna be me and my parents, but my dad thought maybe you’d want to come too.” He shrugged. “You know, ’cause you won’t get to go this year with Jared. He thought you might want to come.”
I thought about that.
“Friday?” I asked.
Tommy nodded. “Yeah. Six o’clock.”
I ran my foot over a smudge on the floor. “Okay,” I said after a while. “Sure. I mean, unless I can’t. Because of the Ebola.”
“Right.” Tommy turned his video game back on. “See you then.”
“See you.”
When I got home, I decided to call Rebecca’s house to make up with her. Then I could ask her dad about vitamins and get some Band-Aids, plus she’d be my friend again.
Tracey picked up the phone. “Young residence,” she said, sounding sweet as peaches.
“Um, hi,” I said. “Is Rebecca there?”
“Who’s calling?”
“It’s Annie. But tell her it’s Grace Foley from school, ’kay?”
“Whatever.” Tracy didn’t tell Rebecca who it was at all, so I don’t even know why she asked. She just hollered, “Rebecca! Phone!”
