by Barbara Park
Then right behind her came Mick. He was carrying a box of cereal and wearing this amazing T-shirt that flashed his name on and off in hot-pink neon letters, so like you couldn’t forget it even if you tried. M-I-C-K! M-I-C-K! M-I-C-K!
I’m talking about the coolest T-shirt you can imagine. And since he was holding so tight to the cereal box, I figured that’s where it must have come from. So, naturally, I tried to grab it to see if there was one in there for me, too. Only—what do you know—Mick refused to hand it over.
The next thing I knew, we were wrestling on top of Mrs. Berryhill’s desk. And Mick had me in a sleeper hold, which he thought was pretty funny, I guess, because he was grinning from ear to ear. And Wocket must have thought so too. Because all of a sudden I heard this weird snorting sound. And when I looked on the ground, Wocket was laughing so hard she was rolling on her back with her little boots up in the air.
It was the funniest thing I’d ever seen. So funny I woke myself up laughing. Which I’d never even heard of anyone doing before.
And it must have been loud. Because right away, I heard Mick’s door open. I was sure it was Nana from Florida. Coming to yell at me for ditching school.
But it wasn’t her at all.
It was my mother. Just standing there, staring at me with this horrible look on her face. And all I could think about was how awful it must be for her. To open the door and see me in Mick’s bed like that.
I started to ramble.
“I … I had a dream about him.”
My mother’s eyes closed.
“No, wait, Mom. You don’t understand. It was a good dream. It was a funny dream. Wocket was in it too. And so was Mrs. Berryhill. I think that’s because when I saw her today, she kept calling Mick my loss. But see, he’s never going to be lost, Mom. I swear to God he’s not. Because Zoe and I sort of figured out that he’s everywhere now. And if you’re everywhere, then how can you be lost?”
Mom’s face softened a little.
“In my dream we were fighting and wrestling around and stuff. But it’s okay to remember that we used to fight, don’t you think? I mean Mick would probably hate it if we tried to turn him into some perfect little angel or something. ’Cause after all he did put a lot of effort into annoying us sometimes, you know.”
I stopped for a second. “Like remember how mad we’d all get when he’d do that disgusting fake sneeze on the last piece of pie so nobody else could have it?
“And remember how irritating he was on vacation last summer? You even made him sit in the car when we went to McDonald’s that one time. Remember? You said he was demented.”
My mother looked away. “Stop it, Phoebe. You know perfectly well I was kidding when I said that.”
I tried not to grin. “You were not, Mother. You were furious at him. And you know why, too.”
She waited a minute before she spoke again.
“I wasn’t furious. I was just irritated. I mean for heaven’s sakes, who wouldn’t be? He wouldn’t stop talking like Elmer Fudd. He talked like Elmer Fudd for three solid days in a row.”
I covered my smile with my hand. “You brought him back an Egg McMuffin, remember? And you said if he talked like Elmer Fudd one more time, you weren’t going to take him to Disneyland.”
I bit my lip. “Remember what he called you then?”
By this time I could tell that my mother was fighting to keep a straight face. She sucked in her cheeks.
“He called me a Wascally Wabbit,” she managed.
But as soon as she said it she started to laugh. We both did.
She came into the room then. It must have been unbelievably hard for her to do that. But she came in, and sat down on the edge of his bed.
I made a place for her next to me on Mick’s pillow. But for the longest time Mom just sat there. Stroking her fingers lightly over his bedspread.
Then at last she lay down beside me and gently brushed the hair from my eyes. “Tell me some more about your dream,” she whispered.
I told her that dogs can laugh in heaven.
THAT NIGHT Nana from Florida made spaghetti for dinner. When I heard her carrying the plates in to set the table, I rushed in there as fast as I could.
“We don’t eat in the dining room anymore, Nana. We eat on trays in front of the TV. Remember?”
She waved me away. “Can’t eat spaghetti off a tray. Slop it all down the front of you.”
“Yeah, I know. Nana. But still, I don’t think we should—”
My grandmother’s arms flew into the air. “Shoo! Skedaddle! Scat!” she said.
Nana from Florida has cats. It explains a lot.
An hour later, she called us to dinner by banging on the spaghetti pot with a metal spoon. Only when we got there, all the place mats were at the wrong spots. Like my father’s place mat was at Mick’s old spot, and my mother’s iced tea glass was where Pop had always sat. Meanwhile, my milk was right across from him where Mom used to sit. And Nana from Florida was next to me.
Mom was already shaking her head no when my grandmother came through the door with this heavy platter of spaghetti in her hands, hollering, “Hot, hot, hot!”
She hurried to set it down. That’s when she noticed us standing there staring at the place mats.
“Oh poop,” she said. “I guess crazy old Nana got everyone all catawampus, didn’t I?”
Then, as usual, her patience was gone and her hands were waving all around in the air again with that same metal spoon.
“Well, won’t kill ya, will it? Sit down before this stuff gets cold.”
I was halfway through my spaghetti before I realized what an amazing thing my grandmother had done.
Accidentally on purpose, she had gotten us back to the table. Eating as a family again.
And no one was staring at Mick’s empty chair.
Nana from Florida.
Who would have thought it?
Common
Sense and
Good Judgment
THREE BLOCKS FROM MY HOUSE, there used to be a dangerous intersection. It was one of those intersections where it was impossible for cars to pull out onto the main street without horns honking and brakes screeching and stuff.
My father griped about it every time we drove through there.
“The city’s not going to put a light in here until someone gets hurt,” he’d say. “You wait and see. It’s going to take an accident before anything gets done.”
Last year there were four accidents in seven months and they finally installed a traffic signal.
The first time we drove through it, some guy ran a red light and Pop had to swerve out of the way to keep from hitting him.
It scared us both to death. Pop swore at the guy and then started right in on this lecture about “how you can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make him drink.”
“It’s a sad lesson, Phoebe,” he said. “But no matter how many traffic lights they put in, they’ll never be able to make people use common sense and good judgment.”
As he was talking, he turned around to make sure I was paying attention. While his head was turned, our car drifted into the next lane and two cars blasted their horns at us.
He made a quick recovery. It was close, though.
It was also the end of his talk on good judgment and common sense. And the lesson I ended up learning that day was that even smart guys with chemistry degrees do stupid stuff once in a while.
It’s just that usually when you do stupid stuff, you luck out and get away with it. And if you luck out enough times, it’s pretty easy to start believing that you’re always going to luck out. Forever, I mean.
Like I can’t even count how many soccer games I played in without shin guards before I finally got kicked in the leg and started wearing them. Over thirty, though, I bet.
And my mother had never had a major sunburn her whole entire life till she and Pop went to the beach for their anniversary last year. You can still see the blotchy places where her skin peeled
from all the blisters, by the way.
And then there was Mick. Who went twelve years and five months without ever falling off his bike.
So he refused to wear a helmet.
And it’s the one thing about him that I’ve tried to forget. And to forgive him for.
And I’m sorry, but I can’t seem to do either one.
IT WAS OVER A WEEK before Mrs. Berryhill called me down to her office again. I was kind of nervous when I got her note. Even though I knew my parents had explained to her about me ditching school that day, part of me was still expecting detention.
That’s why I was relieved to see another woman sitting in her office when I walked in. Mrs. Berryhill introduced us. Her name was Mrs. Somebody-or-other from the PTA.
She shook my hand and said how “sincerely sorry” she was about what happened to my brother. Then she started right in on how the PTA wanted to make sure that nothing like that ever happened again, so they were going to sponsor this big assembly on bike safety. It was already in the works, she said. There were going to be police officers, and instructional videos, and demonstrations of the latest safety gear, and yadda, yadda, yadda…
“We’d like to invite you to sit onstage with the other speakers,” she told me. Then she took my hand again and asked if I thought maybe I could say a few words to my classmates about bike safety. Because a few words from me would have “a tremendous impact,” she thought.
And through all of this, I just sort of sat there, you know? Staring at her in disbelief. Because I swear I could not figure out what planet this woman had come from.
I mean where in the world had she ever gotten the nerve to ask me something like that? Had it never even dawned on her that the timing of a bicycle-safety assembly was just a little off for me? That maybe I would have liked to see a safety assembly before my brother was killed?
I didn’t make a scene. I just stood up and took my hand away.
“I can’t,” I said.
When I turned to go, Mrs. Somebody-or-other fell all over herself telling me how much she understood.
Which really killed me, by the way.
Because the woman didn’t have a clue.
I DON’T KNOW when I changed my mind about speaking at the assembly.
I think it was just one of those flipflops you do sometimes. You know, like at first you have this gut reaction to something and you’re positive that you’re totally right. Only after a while, it creeps into your mind that the other guy may actually have a point. Then the next thing you know, his point’s making more sense than your point. Which is totally annoying. But still, it happens.
It used to happen with me and Mick all the time. Like a couple of months ago, we were arguing about whether the Three Stooges were funny or not. I kept saying they were hilarious, and Mick kept saying they were just morons.
Then we started kind of wrestling around a little bit, and the next thing I know, Mick jumps up and starts slapping the top of his head with his hand and fluttering it up and down in front of my face. After that, he grabs my nose with his fist, twists it hard, and finally slaps it away with his other hand. He ended his performance with the classic Three Stooges laugh—Nyuk, nyuk, nyuk—and a quick move to boink my eyes out with his fingers. Fortunately, I was able to block it with my hand.
Mick stopped the routine as fast as he had started it. Then, without saying a word, he stood up real dignified-like and dusted himself off.
He looked at me without the trace of a smile. “Hilarious, wasn’t I?” he said dryly.
“Yes,” I lied. “You were.”
But deep down I had already started to feel different about the Stooges.
THERE WERE eight hundred people in the gym when I walked to the microphone that morning. I wasn’t nervous, though, which really surprised me. But I swear I felt almost relaxed when I set down my bag of stuff next to the podium.
“I’m Mick Harte’s sister,” I said. Then I bent down and reached into my plastic bag.
“When Mick was in third grade, this is what my grandmother from Florida sent him for Christmas.”
I held it up. “It’s a glow-in-the-dark bow tie with pink flamingos on it.”
A couple of kids chuckled a little.
“Don’t worry,” I said. “He never wore it. He said it made him look like a dork.”
There was more laughing then. And I reached into my bag again.
“When Mick was in fourth grade, my Aunt Marge sent him this from Michigan.”
I held up a hat in the shape of a trout.
“Mick said this one went beyond dork, all the way to doofus,” I said.
This time everybody really cracked up. Some of the kids in the first row even stood up and started craning their necks to see what I would pull out next.
They watched as I turned the bag upside down and a cardboard box fell onto the stage.
Carefully, I set it on the podium and waited for everything to get totally quiet.
“When Mick turned ten, my parents gave him this for his birthday.”
I took my time opening the lid. I mean you could really feel the anticipation and all.
But when I finally pulled Mick’s gift out of the box—still brand-new—there was just this gasp.
And no one laughed at all.
No one even moved.
“This was my brother’s bike helmet,” I said.
My voice broke, but somehow I forced myself to finish.
“He said it made him look like a dork.”
Forever
I DON’T KNOW if what I said at that assembly will make a difference. I don’t know if it will help anyone use better judgment than my brother did. I hope so, though. Honest to God, I do. Because Mick died from a massive head injury. And yet the doctors said that just an inch of Styrofoam would have made the difference between his living and dying.
It’s been a month since the accident now. Things have gotten a little better at home. Nana from Florida went back to Orlando. And my mother gets dressed in the mornings, usually. She’s gone back to work, too—just two days a week, but it’s a start.
We sit down to dinner every night at our new places. Eating still isn’t a big deal with us, though. Like last night we had grilled cheese sandwiches and mashed potatoes. And on Sunday all the forks were in the dishwasher so we ate potato salad with soup spoons. My mother’s eased up on stuff like that. Death sort of gives you a new outlook on the importance of proper silverware.
It’s called perspective. It means your father doesn’t iron a crease in his pants every morning. And the hamburgers come in all shapes and sizes.
I’ve started to laugh more often. But I still feel guilty when I’m having too good a time. Which is totally ridiculous. Because if I want to feel guilty, there’re lots better reasons than that. Like I’m just now starting to deal with how Mick asked me to ride his bike home that day and all.
I kept that whole memory tucked away in the back of my mind after the accident happened. But bad memories must grow in the dark, I think, because it kept on creeping into my thoughts, till it was with me almost all the time, it seemed.
Then last Saturday, when my father and I were riding home from a soccer game, my stomach started churning like it always does right before I’m about to blurt out an unplanned confession.
It’s one of the sickest feelings there is, by the way. To realize you’re about to squeal on yourself like that.
The only thing sicker is keeping it inside.
So it all came busting out. All about how Mick asked me to ride his bike that day. And how I had soccer practice so I told him I couldn’t do it.
“See, Pop? Don’t you get it? I could have kept the accident from ever happening. If only I had ridden his bike home, Mick would still be here right now.”
I was crying a little bit now. But except for handing me the travel tissues from the dashboard, my father hardly seemed to notice. Instead, he just kept staring out the window at the road in front of us.
; Then slowly, he began shaking his head from side to side.
“I’m sorry, Pop. I’m sorry. I’m sorry,” I said over and over again.
My face was buried in my hands when I finally felt him touch my shoulder.
“I’m going to make a list, Phoebe,” he said. “And I want you to keep a count.” His voice was real low and steady as he began.
“If only you had ridden Mick’s bike home, Mick would still be here.
“If only the truck had been going a little faster or a little slower, Mick would still be here.
“If only his meeting had been scheduled one day earlier or one day later, Mick would still be here.
“If only it had been raining that day, I’d have driven him to school and Mick would still be here.
“If only one of his friends had kept him talking a second longer at his locker that afternoon…
“If only the house he was riding to had been in the other direction…
“If only that rock hadn’t been on the sidewalk at the exact spot …”
He stopped then. And I was pretty sure he was finished. But all at once, he heaved this God-awful sigh and whispered, “If only I had made him wear his helmet.”
My heart broke for my father at that moment and I reached my hand out to him.
He held on to it tight. Then he smiled the saddest smile you’ve ever seen.
“What number are we on, little girl?” He sounded so old.
I scooted closer to him.
“I think we’re done, Pop,” I said softly.
He pressed my hand to his cheek.
The two of us drove home in silence.
YESTERDAY was the official one-month anniversary of the accident. I used to think that anniversaries only celebrated happy things. But now I know that they’re just a way of measuring time.
I went to soccer practice after school. I didn’t feel much like running, though. Coach Brodie must have sensed something was wrong, because she didn’t push me or yell at me for dogging it, like she usually does.
The weird thing is, after practice was over, I didn’t want to leave the field. All I wanted to do was sit on the sidelines by myself for a while. And think about Mick.
