Here's to You, Zeb Pike

by Johanna Parkhurst

  I race over to Julia’s bedside. “Hey.” I grin. “You’re awake.”

  Julia is staring blankly at the white walls surrounding her. It’s pretty obvious she’s terrified. “It’s okay,” I tell her. “You’re in the hospital. They had to take your appendix out.”

  Julia’s eyes go round. “What’s a pendick?”

  At least that makes me smile; it’s so good to hear her voice again. “Just a part of you that you don’t need anymore. Don’t worry. I’m right here with you, and you’ll be able to leave soon.”

  Julia nods. “And we can go home?”

  I hesitate slightly. We’ll probably never go back to our old apartment again, and I know it. “Not right away, Jules.” I breathe a sigh of relief when she doesn’t ask why. She just curls up and starts sucking her thumb. Once again, I don’t try to stop her.

  I WAKE up groggy and disoriented, uncertain where I am. It takes me a few minutes to register everything that has gone on in the last twenty-four hours or so; a quick recap of those events has me wide awake in no time.

  Julia’s already awake and picking at a bowl of Jell-O someone left for her. “Hey, Julia,” I say. “How are you feeling?”

  Julia frowns. “My tummy still hurts a little,” she says with incredible concentration, “but I’m not tired anymore.”

  “Good.” I start over toward her bed and am sitting on the edge of it when Matt comes rushing in.

  “Julia, you’re awake!” He comes running over to hug her, and she puts down her dish for a moment to hug him back. I see her wince a little as he grabs her, so I pull him away gently. “Calm down, chief. She’s still a little sick.”

  Julia frowns at me. “I am not,” she says smartly. “Matt, do you want some of my Jell-O?” He starts slurping it down with her, telling her all about Race’s house. “He has these really cool video games, and he let me play some last night!” I’m staring at them, wistfully thinking about how close they really are. I wonder if they’ll get split up too. I only have a second to think about that before Barbara comes in.

  “Hey, Dusty,” she says. She tries to pat me on the shoulder, but I hop off the bed and step out of the way. “I just dropped Race off at school and let them know what was going on. They said they’d make up an assignment package for what you’re missing.” I just shrug. Who really cares about school anymore? Now that I don’t have to put on the Golden Child front anymore, there doesn’t seem much point in getting good grades. Not to mention that I probably won’t even be going to Prescott for much longer.

  The kids keep rambling about video games and Jell-O, and Barbara sinks into the chair I slept in the night before. “Listen, Dusty, you should probably know that Ms. Davies called. She wants to meet me this morning in a few hours, and she said it would probably be best that you attended.”

  I’m instantly wary. She’s found homes for us already, I think. Great. “Who’ll watch the kids?”

  Barbara looks over at them, a distant smile on her face. “Oh, I asked around the nurses’ station. There’s a nurse who thinks they are just adorable, and she said she’d keep an eye on them.”

  So this is it—the moment of truth. Ms. Davies is going to tell us we’ll be going to separate places. There is no way I am going to let that happen; not after all the work I’ve put into making sure we stay a family. I start making back-up plans in my head. Can I run away with Matt and Julia? Hide out at the old apartment until the rent money runs out? Nah, that’s the first place they’ll look for us. Maybe if I take the kids with me and go see Dad again…. I spend the next few hours adding details to far-fetched plans I’ll never be able to pull off. Matt and Julia start playing Candy Land together. At least Julia seems okay, especially for a kid who just had surgery the day before.

  Around ten o’clock, Barbara goes to find the nurse who offered to watch the kids. Once Julia and Matt have safely pulled the poor woman into their amazingly long Candy Land tournament, Barbara signals to me that it’s time for the meeting.

  Ms. Davies is seated at a long table in a large conference room. She has on a black suit and large gold earrings, and she suddenly looks a lot more menacing than she did the day before. The room is so tense that it feels like we’re facing off in some kind of battle. Well, I guess we kind of are. Teenager vs. Department of Children and Families. They definitely have the advantage in this one. Dad’s bookies probably wouldn’t even give me 50:1 odds.

  “Dusty,” she smiles. “How are you holding up?”

  I try to give her the hardest look I have. It’s the same look I gave the guy at Sunny’s the day before. “Okay.” I shrug. “Julia seems to be fine.”

  “Good.” She opens a manila file folder in front of her. “Well, Dusty, I have big news. I started off by looking to see if you had any living relatives within the states. I managed to come up with something interesting. Dusty, were you aware your mother had an older brother?”

  I blink a few times in rapid succession. Mom has always told me she’s an only child. “No way,” I say with a frown.

  “Yes, apparently he lives in Danville, Vermont—your mother’s hometown. His name is Jackson Morton.”

  I open my mouth to say something, but nothing comes out. Jackson is my middle name.

  “He’s married to a woman named Beth. Apparently they have no children, but they have always wanted to. Mr. Morton was quite shocked to hear you and your brother and sister existed. He said he’s had no contact with your mother since she left Vermont at the age of eighteen. Jack and Beth would like very much for all three of you to go live with them.”

  It’s one of those moments when you know something is coming, but you somehow hold out hope that it won’t arrive. Maybe, you think, it will take a detour or something—or get hit by a truck, or some bad weather will hold it up. Well, this sentence doesn’t encounter any of those problems, and now I’m staring down the idea of moving clear across the country. “When?”

  Ms. Davies looks into her file folder. “Your aunt and uncle had actually already started the paperwork to become foster parents at some point in the future, so it shouldn’t take us too long to okay them as your guardians.” She closes the folder and looks back up. “If they check out okay, and it looks like they will, they’d like to come out and meet you guys within a few weeks.”

  Barbara and Ms. Davies start talking rapidly, and I take a few deep breaths. Long-lost relatives and moving to Vermont. Not things I’ve been expecting. I don’t want to be in this cramped, tense room anymore, so I take off out of there as quickly as I can. I don’t even know where I am going; I’m just headed anywhere that isn’t that room.

  “Dusty!” I can hear Barbara calling behind me. “Dusty, come back!”

  “I’m going to Jules’s room!” I yell back down the hallway. Doctors and nurses are looking at me strangely, and I soon realize that’s because Barbara is chasing me down the hallway. She grabs my shoulder, forcibly turning me around.

  “Dusty,” she heaves, out of breath, “I’m sorry all this is happening. But you need to understand, this is a good thing!”

  “Really? A good thing?” It’s hard to tone down the sarcasm in my voice. “You think my brother and sister and I getting shipped halfway across the country to live with complete strangers is a good thing? You’ve got a strange idea of what makes something stellar news.”

  “Dusty,” she says with a frown, “don’t you understand how serious this situation is? How close you and Julia and Matt came to being split up and placed with different families? Especially you! You’re already in high school. Ms. Davies was talking about putting you into a group home.”

  “Serious? Serious?” I realize I’m yelling, but I don’t care. “Do I know how serious this is? Who’s been washing clothes and doing dishes and making endless cups of ramen for years now? Who’s been lying to the Prescott secretaries constantly and begging his dad for money just to keep that woman—” Here I pause and gesture frantically down the hallway toward Ms. Davies. “—out of their li
fe? Yeah, Barbara,” I tell her, “I think I know how serious this is.”

  She looks at me strangely. “Then why aren’t you at least a little bit happy about this?”

  I remember, right after I met Race, wishing my mother was more like his. At this moment I wish I’d never seen her stupid face. I glare at her. “I’m not…. I don’t know, okay? I don’t want to move across the country. I don’t want an aunt or an uncle.” I practically hiss that part through my teeth. “We would’ve been fine if you hadn’t told anybody about my parents. But you had to go tell everybody what was going on.”

  She purses her lips. “You’re darn right I did, Dusty,” she says quietly. I can’t keep my glare going, so I turn back to walk toward Julia’s room. Barbara doesn’t say another word, but I can feel her behind me the whole way there.

  HOURS LATER, Race and I are sitting in the cafeteria drinking sodas and eating really bad cake. His mom dropped him off after school so he could keep me company while Julia sleeps. She took Matt home with her so he could get some rest and do some homework. She didn’t even ask me if I wanted to go back to their house. I think she already knew that answer. I would’ve rather had Matt not go anywhere near her either, but I couldn’t ask him to stay at the hospital all night with me.

  “So you guys are moving to Vermont,” Race says quietly. He is definitely not his usual self. He’s pushing the chocolate icing in front of him around his plate in big circles, and he keeps almost tipping his soda over with his elbow and grabbing it at the last minute.

  I shrug. “Just until I figure something out. Not forever,” I add hastily.

  Race shrugs. “Well, maybe it’ll be good.”

  “Whaddya mean?” I can feel my eyes narrowing. “What do you think could ever be good about us moving?” For the second time in two days, my vision of Race blurs.

  “I dunno….” Race’s eyes shift. “I mean, maybe now you’ll have time to skateboard and do what you want and you won’t have to be with Julia and Matt all the time. Maybe you’ll have… you know… parents.”

  I can’t believe what I’m hearing. “I have parents,” I snort. “What’s wrong with you anyway? I thought you’d be all pissed at your mom for ratting us out and getting me sent to Vermont, but it sounds like you’re taking her side.”

  Now Race’s eyes are beginning to narrow. “She didn’t have a choice, Dusty,” he says. “I mean, what was she supposed to do? Not say anything?”

  “Well, it’s not like you ever told her what was going on!” I can’t quite believe Race is going along with all this.

  “’Course I didn’t, stupid,” he says. “I knew she’d have to tell people. Duh. Dusty, you are really stupid sometimes. In the real world,” he goes on sarcastically, “normal people make sure that kids have parents.” He makes sure to put extra emphasis on the phrase “real world.”

  I stand quickly, feeling my head spin. “You know,” I say loudly, not caring who else in the cafeteria can hear me, “maybe leaving this place won’t matter so much. It’s not like I had any friends here or anything.”

  “Whatever, Dusty.” Race stands too, flipping his hair out of his face. “You think whatever you wanna think. We both know my mom had to do what she did. You couldn’t keep doing what you were doing, even if you never admit it.” He storms out of the cafeteria.

  I just stand there, staring stupidly at the chocolate cake still on the tray, wishing I could chuck it into the wall.

  And the whole time, I know it doesn’t matter what I do anymore. My future’s being laid out for me now.

  It kind of makes me wonder if Zeb wanted to turn back on that trek up the peak, or if his team made him change course. Was he the kind of guy who would have died conquering the mountain? Was it the people around him who made him give it up and head back to safety?

  And if it wasn’t his idea, could he have made it up if they just would have let him try?

  “DUSTY, WHAT if they don’t like me?”

  It’s four days later, and Matt, Jules, and I are sitting in the basement office of Barbara’s house. Skype is up on the computer screen in front of me, and Julia’s worried that the random faces about to appear there won’t like us.

  You ever have one of those moments where you actually can’t believe what’s happening is really happening?

  I lift Julia onto my lap. “’Course they’ll like you. Everyone does. And if they don’t, I won’t let us move there.”

  Matt is sitting next to us, not saying anything. He’s been strangely silent about all this since I told him and Julia about our new relatives a few days ago—he just sort of nodded and asked me a few questions about Vermont. Julia, on the other hand, hasn’t shut up. It’s been all, “Is Mom coming too?” “Can I bring my toys?” “Will my school be there?”

  If I really didn’t want to meet this new aunt and uncle, I’d be almost happy about this Skype session—finally, someone besides Barbara to help with all the questions.

  The computer makes a weird, almost gurgly, sound. “What’s that?” Julia asks.

  “Uh….” I’m not so great with a lot of computer stuff. We’ve never owned our own, so I pretty much only know how to do whatever I learned at school or messing around with Race’s laptop.

  Matt rolls his eyes. “It’s them calling, duh,” he says, and he leans over to click a button with the mouse.

  I nudge him. “Show-off.”

  And then two faces are suddenly filling the screen in front of us, and I know right away they’re our aunt and uncle.

  Jack is, like, a mirror image of me. He has my brown hair, my blue eyes, the same nose, even the same skinnier body type as me—he’s just got a little more muscle. All my life I’ve wondered why I don’t look like either Mom or Dad, and now I’m pretty sure I know the reason Mom gave me Jack’s name. Maybe I’ve always looked exactly like her brother.

  “Hi, guys,” he says, and I realize we even sound a lot alike. “I’m your Uncle Jack, and this is your Aunt Beth.”

  “Hello.” The woman next to him smiles. She’s nice-looking enough, with dark hair and eyes, and a huge smile stretched all the way across her face.

  None of the three of us say anything. I’m still trying to get some sort of greeting out of my mouth when Julia waves at the screen.

  “Hi! I’m Julia, but my brothers call me Jules sometimes.”

  Matt shrugs at me and starts talking. “I’m Matt,” he says. He glances at the room behind them, which is full of fancy-looking furniture. “Your house looks nice.”

  Beth’s face lights up. “I’m so glad you like it! We were going to carry around the laptop later and give you a tour, if you’d like that.”

  Matt looks intrigued. “Sure.”

  I know it’s coming, but I’m still caught off guard when the two of them turn to me next. Jack grins, and I know he is thinking of how much we look alike. “You must be Dustin.”

  “Dusty,” says Julia, suddenly grabbing my hand. It’s amazing how much strength that quickly gives me. “Yeah,” I add, clearing my throat. “Everybody calls me Dusty.”

  “Hello, Dusty.” Beth smiles at me widely. “I’m very glad to meet you.”

  I can’t seem to return the smile, so I just nod.

  THE REST of the conversation goes pretty well. We find out they have two dogs, and that gets Matt all excited—he’s always wanted a dog. Jack asks me what courses I’m taking in school; turns out he’s a math teacher at the high school I’ll go to out there. Great. Just what I need. Beth starts telling us that she and Jack are going to fly out soon to meet us, and that they’re really excited. They’ve been to Colorado before, but never Colorado Springs, so Julia and Matt start telling them about it.

  I don’t say much. Mostly just nod here and there.

  It’s the end of the conversation, though, that gets to me, even though it’s the part that definitely makes Julia and Matt pretty happy. That’s when Jack and Beth decide to give us a “virtual tour” of our new home.

  They start of
f by taking the laptop to the kitchen. It’s definitely an older house. The kitchen has ancient-looking light fixtures, and the floors are a dark, bowed hardwood. It is nice, though. Comforting. It’s colored in reds and browns, and it looks as though someone has put a lot of thought into it.

  Then we watch the screen as Beth walks through the dining room, which is all green, and into a huge blue living room with tons of electronics and two soft, comfy-looking sofas. I’m a little in awe of the large television. “Wow!” says Matt. “You guys must watch a lot of TV!”

  Beth starts laughing. “You’d think that, wouldn’t you? But we hardly ever watch any at all. Jack just likes electronics. He buys anything he thinks looks cool.” She shows us the downstairs bathroom, Jack’s study, which is where they were just talking to us, and the laundry room.

  The she carries the laptop upstairs.

  “I want you to keep in mind that it’s only been a few days, so all the bedrooms aren’t done yet.” All the bedrooms? Are we each getting our own? Matt and I have always shared a room, and when Julia was younger we’d had an even smaller apartment and the three of us shared one. I’ve never had a room of my own. I’ve always wondered what Race did with a room all to himself.

  The upstairs hallway is long. I count three doors on either side of it. Beth opens the first one on the right. “Julia, this will be your room,” she says. “You uncle Jack and I sleep right across the hall.” The door swings out, and my mouth falls open.

  The whole room is painted pink with purple trim. The walls are already decorated with pictures of puppies, kittens, and little kids laughing and playing. The bed is entirely pink, and a row of Barbies lay across the pillow as if they’re waiting for Jules. “I love it! I love it! I love it!” Julia shrieks, grabbing at the computer screen as if she could walk right through it and into the room.

  “How’d you know…?” I ask, clearing my throat. “How’d you know about the pink?”