Record Breaker

by Robin Stevenson

“And he returned it to its owner!” Kate shook her head slowly.

  “Well, I know what you’d do,” I said. “You didn’t even return the dime you found at Tony’s.”

  “Hmph,” Kate snorted, sounding a little offended. “It says here that the guy who returned the money got lots of letters from people who thought he was crazy.”

  “Maybe he was just a really honest person,” I said. “Unlike some others.”

  Kate ignored my dig. “Well, what would you do? Would you rather break the record or keep the money?”

  I thought about it for a minute. My parents worried about money sometimes, I knew that. But would a quarter of a million dollars be enough to make my mom smile again? Would her son being a record breaker be enough? “It’s not a problem I’m likely to have,” I said at last.

  “Sounds like something my dad would say.” Kate made a face. “Hey, how about this one then, Mr. Picky? Longest fall without a parachute.”

  “That’s the guy whose plane was on fire, right?”

  “Eighteen thousand feet! And he didn’t even break a bone. Maybe you could do that.”

  I glared at her. “Ha ha.”

  “Not funny?”

  I made a face. “Okay, sort of funny.”

  She poked her fingers into my cheeks and pulled the corners of my mouth upward. “There, that’s better. You gotta smile at my jokes, Jack.”

  “You’re crazy.” I gave her a halfhearted grin.

  “Atta boy. You still got a ways to go, but that’s an improvement.”

  I closed the book, tapped on its cover and sighed. “The problem is, a lot of these records are impossible for a kid to do. And most of the ones that aren’t impossible I’ve already tried and failed at.” I told her about throwing up raw eggs, which made her laugh, and about the rocking chair and the sausages and the face slapping.

  “And his mom walked in? That was bad luck.” She laughed and laughed. “I wish I’d seen your face.” She made a horrified face: O-shaped mouth, eyebrows raised and eyes stretched. “Hah. You have to admit, it’s pretty funny.”

  I grinned reluctantly. “I guess it is, sort of. But my dad doesn’t think so. Or even my mom anymore.”

  “Mmm. Right.” She tugged on a stray curl poking out from beneath her hat. It boinged back into a spiral when she let go of it. “I bet I could do the sausages. Or the eggs.” She swung her legs back and forth like she was on a swing and trying to go higher. “I can eat tons.”

  “Yeah, but it’s harder than it sounds. Really. I can eat a lot too, but trying to do it that fast is different.”

  “I guess.” She didn’t sound convinced.

  “Anyway, it doesn’t help me if you break a record. It has to be me that does it.”

  “Why? Someone call you a juvenile delinquent?” She laughed.

  “No.”

  “You think people will be impressed, right? Kids at school?”

  Kids. Richard. Dad. But I didn’t say it out loud. “No. I dunno.”

  Her eyes narrowed. “They pick on you? Call you names and stuff?”

  I shook my head. “Nah. Well, one kid does, sometimes, but I don’t really care. He’s a jerk.”

  She stopped kicking her legs and turned to look at me. “So how come this is so important to you?”

  “I don’t know. I just had this idea…”

  “Tell me. Please?” Her eyes were solemn, all traces of laughter gone.

  “You’ll think I’m weird.”

  Kate started kicking again. “I already think you’re weird. All the people I like are weird. That’s better than boring, right?”

  “I guess.” I stared down at my feet dangling in the air. One of my shoelaces had come untied. Twenty feet below, the ground was covered with dead leaves, brown and shiny-wet. “I guess it all started with Annie.”

  She frowned. “Who’s Annie?”

  “She was my parents’ baby. Um, my sister. She died almost a year ago.” I didn’t say that I found her.

  “Wow. That’s awful.” She opened her mouth to say something; then she changed her mind and closed it again.

  “What?” I asked, feeling oddly defensive.

  “Nothing. That’s just sad, is all.”

  “I know what you were going to say.”

  “What, then?”

  I kicked the back of one foot with the toe of the other. “What’s it got to do with the record thing. Right?” I didn’t wait for an answer, just took a deep breath and plowed on. “Okay. I had this idea. My friend Allan—well, he’s only sort of my friend—he said this thing about us being cursed.”

  Kate’s eyes widened. “That’s stupid. You don’t really believe it!”

  “No! Of course not. But a lot of bad things have happened in my family, and I had this idea. I thought that maybe if I could…” I trailed off. “I told you it was stupid.”

  “You said weird, actually. Not stupid.” She looked at me, head tilted to one side.

  “Well, it’s both.” And I felt both weird and stupid for admitting it. “The thing is, I don’t believe it exactly, but I can’t stop thinking about it all the same. And besides, Mom used to laugh like crazy over me trying to break records. She used to tell her friends about it; she said it cracked everyone up. But lately…” I shrugged. “It keeps getting me in trouble. Dad’s furious, and he says it worries Mom…and she won’t even get out of bed hardly.”

  “Why not? What’s wrong with her?”

  I shrugged my shoulders. “Dad says she’s just sad.”

  Kate didn’t say anything for a long time, and I wondered what she was thinking. Finally she sighed. “If I say something, do you promise not to get mad?”

  “Sure.”

  “I mean it. You have to promise.”

  I looked at her apprehensively. “Okay. I promise.”

  Kate folded her arms across her chest and tucked her bare hands into her armpits. “Here’s the thing, Jack: Your dad’s right. Breaking a record isn’t going to help your mom.”

  “I know that,” I said defensively.

  “Then why do you keep trying to do it? You said yourself it’s making things worse.”

  I shrugged. I shouldn’t have told her anything.

  “Why don’t you think about your mom for a change? Do something that might actually help her?”

  I scowled. “Easy for you to say. How do you help someone who won’t even get out of bed? I don’t think she even wants to feel better.”

  Kate narrowed her eyes. “You sound mad. Are you mad at me? I’m only saying what I think. Anyway, you promised not to get mad.”

  I shook my head. Tears were prickling my eyes, and my throat was closing up. “Dunno.”

  “Or are you mad at her?”

  “Not her fault,” I said.

  “I know, but still...”

  I didn’t say anything.

  Kate sighed. “Well, there has to be something we can do.” She was frowning so hard she looked almost fierce.

  I liked that she’d said we. “Maybe I could find a different kind of record,” I said. “You should have seen my mom when I was trying to learn to juggle. Annie was a newborn and Mom was really tired, but it always used to make her laugh.”

  She shook her head. “Yeah. Used to, Jack.”

  I blinked back sudden tears. “The cold’s making my nose run,” I said, wiping my face quickly on my sleeve. “So what do you think I should do, then?”

  “Hmm. I don’t know yet. But I’ll help you figure it out,” Kate said.

  I couldn’t exactly see how she could, but having someone on my side felt good. Like the feeling you get after you’ve eaten your favorite meal or snuggled down in bed on a chilly night: sort of full and warm inside.

  Kate untucke
d her hands from her armpits and blew warm foggy breath on her pink fingers. “How mad would you be if I told my mother about all this?”

  “Your mother?” I echoed.

  She wrinkled her nose, cheeks pink. “She’s good at helping people. Better than me.”

  “I don’t need help,” I said stiffly.

  “Not you, dumbo. Your mother.”

  I couldn’t argue with that. I slipped my mittens off and handed them to Kate. “Here. You can borrow these,” I told her.

  “Really? You’re sure? Wow. Thanks. I lost mine somewhere.” She slipped them on. “Mmm. They’re even warm. So, you’ll come over after school tomorrow, okay? And you can meet my mom.”

  With Kate, it always seemed easier to agree. “Okay,” I said.

  Thirteen

  I walked home, not bothering to go past Allan’s place. Dad was in the kitchen making spaghetti. I didn’t know he knew how. I kicked my shoes off and peered down the hall. The bedroom door was closed.

  “She got up for a couple of hours,” Dad said softly. “Had a bath. Watched some television.”

  “Good.” I wondered if she’d gotten up on purpose when I wasn’t home. Maybe she didn’t want to see me. I’d never admit this to Dad, but sometimes I wondered if Mom blamed me because I was the one who found Annie. I looked at the trees outside the kitchen window. The leaves were dry and brown, barely clinging to the branches. Scatterings of them drifted to the ground with each gust of wind. “Did you see the news?” I asked, needing to change the subject.

  “No. But I heard what happened,” Dad said. “Mrs. Miller called and told me you and Allan were watching. She said you left early.”

  “Yeah.”

  Dad shook his head. “Right on television. I’m sorry you saw that, Jack.”

  I wiped the back of my hand across my eyes roughly. Dad didn’t like crybabies.

  “Seeing someone killed…What is the world coming to?” Dad’s voice was gruff. “I don’t blame you for being upset.”

  I nodded. It was easier to let Dad think that was why I was crying than to try to explain. Especially since I didn’t really understand it myself. Since Annie died, I didn’t understand much at all.

  Annie had been a regular-size baby, but she’d seemed pretty small to me when Mom and Dad brought her home from the hospital. I could cup her whole head in the palms of my hands, and her fingernails were the tiniest little things, transparent and so small they were barely even there. She had long fingers, though: everyone used to comment on it, saying she’d be a good piano player someday.

  I had been surprised when my parents told me they were going to be having a baby. I was ten years old and used to being an only child. I wasn’t sure I liked the idea of a baby joining the family, especially when I overheard my dad joking with Allan’s dad that he might get his baseball player after all.

  But when Annie came home, all wrapped in blankets with a startling shock of black hair sticking out the top, I couldn’t help being excited. Somehow it hadn’t occurred to me that this baby would actually be not just a baby but a particular person—a little girl with long fingers, a girl who liked to be held facing forward so she could see where she was going, a girl who was so determined to hold her head up that when I held her against my chest, her head would thud against me over and over and over again as her neck muscles strained, then gave out. She was no quitter.

  The day she died was just an ordinary Saturday. Annie wasn’t sick or anything. Her crib was in the little room between my parents’ and mine, the room we had always used as a spare room and games room and office. Mom had put her down for a nap. Mom was fanatical about her not being woken up. If Annie was asleep, I wasn’t allowed to listen to the radio or play ball outside with David or the other neighborhood kids or even talk above a whisper. I definitely wasn’t supposed to go into her room during naptime. But that day I was working on a map for school—carefully outlining all the provinces in different colors—and the tip of my red pencil crayon broke halfway through Quebec. So I needed to get the pencil sharpener from the desk, which was still in her room.

  I turned the handle, very slowly and carefully, and pushed the door open. The new beige carpet was thick and plushy under my bare feet. I held my breath, tiptoed to the desk, lifted the pencil sharpener. The room was dead silent; Annie wasn’t stirring. I turned and glanced at her crib as I stepped toward the door. She was lying on her tummy like she always did, her head turned toward me, the pale yellow quilt draped across her small body, her chubby arms stretched out as if she was reaching for something in her sleep. She looked fine. And yet…

  I don’t know what made me hesitate. Maybe something about the silence in the room, or the stillness of her face. The way, even though I was holding my own breath, I couldn’t hear hers. I stepped closer to the crib, not really worried, just watching her face and waiting for the rise and fall of her back, or the twitch of a finger. I wasn’t going to wake her—Mom would be furious if I did—but I wanted to see her sigh and turn her head, or kick a sleeper-covered foot out from under the quilt. Because something wasn’t right.

  I leaned over the white crib railing. “Annie,” I whispered. Her eyes were closed, lashes dark and silky against the pale skin of her cheek, her lips slightly parted and her dark hair thinner than when she was born. I reached over the rail and brushed my fingers lightly against her arm. It felt cold. I pulled the covers up to her shoulders. “Annie,” I whispered again. “Annie.”

  She didn’t move.

  A weird electric feeling was buzzing somewhere around the base of my skull, sending sharp tendrils of fear tingling down my spine. I glanced toward the door, half hoping and half fearing that my mom would walk in. Maybe I should go and get her. Probably Annie was fine though, and I was being crazy, and besides, I wasn’t supposed to be in here. I looked at Annie, lying there so still. “Wake up!” I hissed. I pinched her arm, just gently through the quilt, but she still didn’t move.

  I pinched harder.

  Nothing.

  I shook her shoulder roughly, my heart beating hard. Annie felt all wrong. Not floppy or stiff. Just—wrong.

  I bent close to her, put my hand in front of her face. Touched her lips.

  She wasn’t breathing.

  My first instinct was to run. Out the door, out of the house. Go for a walk. Come home in a few hours. Maybe if I did that, somehow this would not have happened. It would un-happen. It would not count. I took a few steps toward the door—

  And Mom came flying through it, almost running into me. “Jack! My God, what is it?”

  And then I realized I was screaming.

  “Annie,” Mom said. She pushed past me, ran the few steps to the crib. “Annie? Jack, what is it? What—” She broke off, staring down at Annie. I followed her gaze, hoping that Annie would wake and start to cry—half expecting her to; surely I’d been wrong—but she didn’t stir. Mom bent and lifted her up. “Annie? Annie! Annie!” She was shaking her, and still Annie didn’t wake, and my mother sank to the floor with the baby still in her arms, screaming for my father.

  I felt as if I was invisible.

  And I felt as if it was my fault. I knew logically that if I hadn’t gone in, sooner or later Mom would have gone to check on her and found her. I knew that. But ever since Annie died, I couldn’t stop thinking that if I hadn’t gone into her room, maybe she would have woken up like she always did.

  If that red pencil hadn’t broken.

  If I’d outlined Quebec in green instead of red.

  Fourteen

  The day after Lee Harvey Oswald got shot dawned cold and damp, the sky a heavy dark grey that completely hid any trace of the sun. Mom was still in bed when I left for school. I knocked on her door but she muttered that she was sleeping, so I didn’t go in. I walked to school alone, not backtracking to Allan’s to pick him up even though it was
my turn.

  School that day felt like the longest six hours of my life. Allan and I didn’t say a word to each other all day, and every time I looked at him I felt a pang of guilt about telling him to go to hell. Not that he hadn’t deserved it. He’d been a jerk. Still, the thing about Allan was, he didn’t ever mean to be a jerk. Richard was a jerk but he chose to be a jerk. With Allan, it was like he couldn’t really help it.

  As soon as the bell rang and set us free, I ran all the way to Kate’s. I rounded the corner and slowed to a stop in front of her house. I hesitated before knocking softly on the door. I felt suddenly shy.

  Kate flung open the door. “Ha. You came.”

  “I said I would, didn’t I?”

  “Yeah, but I thought you might just be saying that to get me off your case.”

  I gave her a small grin.

  “Ha! You smiled. You know you hardly ever do that?”

  “I smile plenty.”

  She rolled her eyes. “Whatever you say, Jack. Come on in.”

  I stepped inside. I could hear music playing. I recognized it right away: Frank Sinatra. The house smelled like spices—not cinnamon or baking spices but something peppery.

  “You must be Jack”—Kate’s mom stepped into the front hall—“Kate’s new friend.”

  She was very tall—almost as tall as my dad—and she had the same hair as Kate, dark and curly. You could tell it’d be as wild as Kate’s, too, if she didn’t have it cut so short. “Nice to meet you,” I said, “ Mrs…uh…” I realized I didn’t even know Kate’s last name.

  “Levine.” She grinned.

  “My mom likes this music.” I realized as I spoke that I hadn’t heard music in our house for the longest time. Mom used to always have music playing: Perry Como, Eddie Fisher, Patti Page. She liked old music mostly, music from when she and Dad first met. Not Elvis Presley. She didn’t like him at all.

  “It’s wonderful music, isn’t it?” Mrs. Levine began singing along. “The dreams I dream, only the lonely dream…” She had an amazing voice, deep and gravelly.

  “Mom,” Kate said. “Please.”